Meeting Economic Challenges
Reflections on Duke Divinity School and Economic Challenges
Dean L. Gregory Jones
April 2, 2009
I am tempted to frame this reflection simply by quoting Dickens, “it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” In many ways that would be accurate. After all, Duke Divinity School is healthy by most measures: quality of applications, students and faculty, preparation for ministry, and financial support from donors. At the same time, though, we must acknowledge the daunting economic challenges we all face.
However, I want to frame issues about Duke Divinity School’s present strengths and challenges as well as its trajectory in a broader context. For although I believe Duke Divinity School is indeed strong and prepared to address fundamental economic challenges, we also face broader questions about the future of theological education—questions that concern the church and its ministry around the globe, as well as the impact of changes in communications and in some of the ways we understand teaching and learning.
Accordingly, my reflections are shaped by two judgments. First, the current economic crisis reflects deep, global shifts that are likely to reshape the church, ministry, and theological education. Second, this is a time of opportunity for us to offer important and promising leadership in service to the church, the academy, and the world. Many of our strongest institutions today were founded during challenging economic and cultural times in the past; indeed Duke Chapel was constructed in the early 1930s.
Hence, I suggest the issues we need to grapple with can be addressed under one broad question: How should Duke Divinity School’s twenty-first century identity as an institution of theological education differ from its twentieth-century identity?
I group my reflections on this question into four categories: the educational and formational needs of churches and their ministries; education through and beyond degree programs; teaching and learning amid changing patterns of communications; and Duke Divinity School’s financial model.
Theological Education, the Churches, and Ordained Ministry
Significant changes have been underway in churches and ordained ministry in the United States for at least the past decade. Many smaller congregations find it difficult to support a full-time pastor, and more and more have relied on pastors who are educated by alternate routes, such as the Course of Study for United Methodists. Similarly, many larger congregations have turned to hiring laypeople for staff positions that in earlier periods might well have been served by M.Div.-educated associate pastors.
So, although the Master of Divinity remains the gold-standard degree for ordination in the United States, fewer pastors (and staff people in larger churches) are M.Div. graduates.
Nearly all mainline traditions have seen significant decline. More students are coming out of non-denominational settings, and more graduates are interested in finding possible ministries in non-denominational or para-denominational settings.
Seminaries have clearly felt this change. The Association of Theological Schools indicates that 39 percent of seminaries were “financially stressed” as of September 2008, before the onset of the financial crisis.
Amidst these challenges, the expectations of theological education also have been in transition. There is a perceived divide between an understanding of pastors in the United States as caretakers of established congregations, and an understanding of pastors as missionaries who need to start, renovate, or reinvigorate missional congregations and communities.
In my judgment, we need to become more imaginative and innovative in shaping Christian leadership for changing cultural contexts, both inside and beyond the churches. This includes attention to dynamics of race, gender, ethnicity, and particular global contexts in their complexity throughout our education and focus on leadership development. In part, that means aiming at both classical formation and missional leadership skills.
The Curriculum and Education Beyond Degree Programs
This need for imagination and innovation has significant implications for our degree programs, especially the Master of Divinity degree. Duke Divinity School is positioned to develop greater innovation, perhaps including a different paradigm for those students preparing for ordained ministry, precisely because we have a strong, classical educational formation program. We already have developed significant outreach focused on Christian leadership in non-degree programs. However, it is likely that we will need to expand our efforts in the coming five years if we are to anticipate how theological education can best meet the needs of churches and their ministries.
The increasingly international character of our world demands continued transformation of theological education. We need to discover and rediscover the holistic character of the gospel, and of education for ministry, in relation to such themes as reconciliation, leadership, health, sustainable agriculture and economic development.
Further, Duke Divinity School is integrally connected to a major research university. As such, it has a strong academic vocation to bear witness to the significance of rigorous Christian scholarship, to cultivate future teachers and scholars, and to serve as an intellectual center for the church’s own thinking. Clearly, whatever we imagine for the Divinity School cannot exist outside our relationship with the wider university. Opportunities for interschool collaborations abound across the university. Yet the economic models for those programs are challenging, given the differential tuition structures of the various schools.
A signal strength of Duke Divinity School is our longstanding emphasis on continuing education and learning throughout life, now enhanced through our major efforts with care at the end of life, youth, reconciliation, and leadership.
We have made leadership education a focus of our major efforts in non-degree education (which are generously supported by a variety of external funders, especially The Duke Endowment, Lilly Endowment, and the Foundation for End of Life Care/Hugh Westbrook). There is significant energy around these efforts, and I believe they offer excellent promise for development, both through educational programs and through our newly launched web magazine, www.faithandleadership.com.
Even as we celebrate success in these areas, though, we must confront the challenge of coherence and viability of our financial models to support this work.
Teaching, Learning, and Technology
A commitment to sustained face-to-face engagement is central to the teaching and learning enterprise of Duke Divinity School throughout our degree and non-degree programs, and that ought to continue. Even so, changes in technology permit new models for communicating information and ideas that challenge traditional presumptions of classroom lectures as the mainstay of teaching and learning. For example, we can now post lectures on the web in order to maximize face-to-face time in conversation in the classroom.
Although residential communities are important for significant formation over time in the M.Div. program, the ongoing learning needs of some practitioners for non-degree programs can be met primarily in their home contexts, supported by technology. In addition, shorter-term models of teaching and learning offer opportunities for education and formation for ministry in international contexts. The school will thoughtfully explore new opportunities to enhance our teaching and learning with technology.
The Current Financial Model for DDS
Duke Divinity School has four primary sources of income for the general budget: tuition, expendable resources from endowments, Ministerial Education Fund support, and annual-fund gifts. Over the past decade, we also have relied on several large grants from The Duke Endowment, the Lilly Endowment, and the Foundation for End of Life Care/Hugh Westbrook to further our work through restricted gifts and grants.
Our most stark financial challenge stems immediately from the global economic crisis: a decline in endowment income over the next four to five years. Our best estimates indicate that the Divinity School’s annual income from endowments will decline by between $750,000 and $1.4 million by Fiscal Year 2013. Although this is a modest fraction of the total school budget of about $30 million, a significant portion of our budget comes from funding that is earmarked for specific purposes, such as endowed professorships and scholarships and particular programs where the funds cannot be redirected. The remainder of the budget, including portions that could be cut to help offset losses from endowment, is much smaller. Thus, any cuts we might make would be magnified and could have even more significant implications for the school.
As it is, we have cut all non-salary program expenses across the school by 6.6 percent for 2010. There are few additional cost savings to be found without affecting the fundamental quality of the school (i.e., eliminating faculty and staff positions; cutting whole departments, reducing financial aid, etc.).
Our tuition income likely will continue to rise, but it is constrained by our students’ ability to pay, by the market, and by our commitment to students from under-resourced communities. Further, given the likely starting salaries for practicing ministers, we do not want students to be loaded with debt.
We project that due to the economic challenges in the United States, our support from the Ministerial Education Fund of the United Methodist Church will decline over the next year. It is hard to predict, as much depends on the health of the U.S. economy and the health of the United Methodist Church.
Our annual fund has grown from $200,000 to $600,000 during the past 12 years. It is showing some increase this year, which is heartening, especially due to increased generosity from our biggest supporters. One scenario for balancing our budget is to make the annual fund, rather than endowments, the primary focus of our fundraising. Ideally, this would be a short-term strategy, as the long-term viability of the Divinity School depends in part on a strong endowment. I hope that people will give generously to the annual fund this year and in future years, as it is critically important to providing much-needed financial aid for students.
Support for restricted programmatic purposes from The Duke Endowment, the Lilly Endowment, and the Foundation for End of Life Care/Hugh Westbrook has been critically important. We are grateful for this ongoing generous support. However, in the current financial climate, there are serious questions about the extent to which we can continue to rely on large external grants. Overall, I believe we need a new financial model for the next decade, given the changing economic environment. Simply cutting expenses would gut the very strength on which we depend and diminish our ability to provide leadership within Duke, in the churches, and beyond. To be sure, we need to seek more efficiencies, but we also need to generate new revenue.
Possible strategies include making a concerted push for financial supporters to focus on annual fund gifts; developing scenarios to enlarge the M.Div. component of the student body; exploring one or more new masters degree programs; and exploring non-degree programs that might generate revenue.
All of these options should be explored within the larger overall context I outlined earlier. I believe that when we put all the pieces together we will find we are asking a question that, at its heart, concerns what a twenty-first century institution of theological education ought to be. As part of a university-wide targeted strategic planning process, I have formed five task forces to help the school think through the following:
- external environments (such as churches, denominations, and seminaries)
- degree programs, curriculum, and faculty development
- education beyond degree programs
- teaching, learning, and changing patterns of communications
- finances, personnel, space, and development
It is in this context that I ask for your reactions and ideas. Please share them with me by emailing Marsá McNutt, staff assistant in the Office of the Dean.