theological education bubble

Theological Education Bubble IV: Is a PhD a good investment?

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Let’s consider the costs of doing a PhD:

(1) Tuition and living expenses:  My guess is this is going to be in the range of an average of about $55K per year for a family; 45K per year for a couple with one PhD student, and 35K for a single.

=$105,000-$300,000

(2) Minimum of three years lost wages for British PhD; average of six years for North America.  The average salary is $40,000.

=$120,000-240,000 lost wages; but if the above numbers living expenses would have to paid for in any case, so let’s subtract 50% for living expenses and 25% for taxes = $30,000-60,000

(3) Interest costs on student loans.  Let’s say you need to borrow only $50K at 5% and payments start only after graduation.  This calculation counts only PhD debt and assumes that the Master’s level education is already covered.

The first monthly payment (interest only): = $200.  Let’s conservatively say that the cost of interest loan will be $8000 over the lifetime of the loan.

So now, let’s see where we are, adding up these expenses; realistically a PhD will cost between $140-370K.

Suppose you were about to do a PhD and you had that kind of money available to you.  So instead you invest it, and for argument’s sake you put it in an average TSX dividend stock that pays 4%.  You started your PhD in 2004 and you graduated in 2010: the TSX has gone from 8300 and 13400 = 60% gain.  So now those funds would be worth between $224,000 and $592,000, and they would have provided a modest investment income at 4% of between $5600 and 14,800 per annum.  So at the end of a six year PhD you start with a negative equity of $50,000 instead of positive equity of between $260,000 and $680,000.

Now some have likened getting an academic job to winning the lottery.  The fact is that for the most part, most jobs, except academic jobs, a PhD is superfluous.  Of my friends that did PhDs while I was at Cambridge, only 50% landed jobs in academics.  Those jobs on average pay less well than if these men of considerable talent had applied themselves to some other professional occupation such as law [update:  well maybe not], medicine or engineering, and I don’t know anyone I would call well-off working in academics that wasn’t already well-endowed with family wealth.

Suppose I come to you and say I have a great investment idea.  You put up $150,000 dollars and at the end of six years you will have $50,000 in debt, and at the end of ten more years, you will get your money back–oh, but wait, there’s another catch: you have a 50% chance of losing the initial investment permanently .  Doing PhD degree would seem to have a very bad risk to reward ratio.

“Ah!” you say, “But you haven’t dealt with the intangible (non-renumerative) benefits.” Ok there are benefits, I agree.  But there also other intangible risks.

Intangible Benefits:

(1) Bragging rights:  with a PhD you have a great accomplishment behind your name and the right to brag and lord it over others who don’t have one.  People might even call you “doctor”.

(2) You may learn how to do research at a highly specialized level and to solve problems, for you get to spend three to six years researching a subject about which you are passionate. Of course, you might be in a bubble without realizing it.

(3) You remain attached to the academic world the whole time you are studying, meet some interesting people, perhaps learn a foreign language.

(4) If you are lucky, your marriage will survive, your children will love you, and you will write several books that will make you a household name throughout the world. But of course you don’t need a PhD to do this.

(5) If you do land that elusive job in academics, your self-esteem and future career will now be determined by 18-22 year olds who fill out teaching evaluations (oh, wait, that should perhaps be in the category below).

Intangible Risks:

(1) You may have to deal with the bitterness of failure if you don’t complete your dissertation or if after completion it is not accepted.  I knew one lady who went into a 25 year cycle of depression after failing her Oxford dissertation (due to no fault of her own).

(2) You may feel isolated and detached from society during your years of focussed research on a subject about which few people know and fewer still care.

(3) You may have to deal with resentment towards the academic community for letting you spend so much of your life and financial resources for a degree that doesn’t land you a viable job.  While you are waiting on tables during your day job, that resentment manifests itself in poor tips from your customers.

(4) You may end up in adjunct hell, i.e.,  the work of teaching post-secondary education for less than minimum wage without the respect that comes from being a real professor.

Theological Education Bubble III: Just because you got a PhD from … does not mean that you must be paid a livable wage for doing what you have chosen to do

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Are you thinking about a PhD in evangelical theology?  I want to share part of a message that a seminary dean once sent to me.  Now pretend that you are the recipient and that you had just been wondering if your employer is ever planning to offer you full-time employment.  The date of the message was 1998 (emphasis mine):

Just because you got a PhD from [insert name of well-respected university] does not mean you must be paid a livable wage for doing what you have chosen to do. There is simply no correlation economically between the level of education and what people end up getting paid. This is certainly true in the case of the academic community, where there are literally thousands of people who do PhD’s in the humanities (including theology) and who simply cannot find a job working full-time in the area for which they were educated. For at least a decade, there have been fewer and fewer full-time academic teaching positions ([Insert name of large, well-known institution] Seminary, for example, has said that no more than 60% of faculty positions will be tenure track positions, and they have really not added anybody net in recent years) open each year, matched with an increase in more and more PhD graduates each year. The trend will be more and more people teaching as adjuncts, regardless of the number of courses that they teach (many such teachers teach a much larger than traditional full-time load). This is not some plot by the administration of such schools, but it is the only possible way for any but the very rich schools to survive (and the very rich schools are also moving into this direction).

If anything, the bubble in sacred and secular institutions alike has become more bloated since 1998.  Now one can ask why this man, who had taught one of my master’s level seminars, would not have warned me seven years earlier when he saw that I was on the way to do a PhD.  Does he not bear some responsibility for what I later became, an unemployed holder of a PhD?  I ask this not because I hold any rancour towards him.  Not at all.  But it is really a question of asking those who are handing out PhDs whether they are acting in their own interests or in the interests of the candidates.  Theological education, like all education (“The media is the message”), has become self-sustaining and self-justifying; producing more graduates employs staff and faculty and sustains the enterprise itself.  It doesn’t really have a purpose that is easy to see, because there are few jobs available where a PhD in theology is not a luxury rather than a necessity.  When you have 8000 people with PhD’s working as waiters and waitresses, then there is a serious problem.

Don’t get me wrong.  While I’m shrugging, I am not bitter nor do I regret my studies. My PhD was a luxury that my family could afford.  My dad and an inheritance from grandfather paid my full education and all my student loans by 1996, the year I graduated. But the situation in education is alarming–even those who have full-time jobs have little security as schools begin to downsize as a result of the economy.  One of my friends, a high-level administrator, is suffering from just such a downsize despite his PhD in science.  Actually, since I’ve become a DIY investor and financially independent as a result, perhaps I’ve been spared the pain that some of my friends with full-time academic jobs will soon face.

Theological Education Bubble II: Driving an SUV could make you a goat, but an atheist advocate of abortion might be a sheep

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Close to forty years ago Singer wrote a powerful paper in ethics on the culpability of rich people in allowing the poor of the world to die. And yet rather than read that paper and Singer’s other work on the plight of the world’s poor, self-righteous suburban evangelicals continue to drive their big fat SUVs, tithe 4% of their income (on average) and stand in judgment of his views on abortion. What damnable hypocrisy. Before you call Peter Singer evil try reading the parable of the sheep and goats half a dozen times whilst setting aside your self-righteous certainty that you’re a sheep and Singer is a goat.

Randal Rauser, Associate Professor of Historical Theology, Taylor Seminary, Edmonton

I live in literalville.  I suppose Prof. Randal Rauser could provide nuance for the above quote that is cited at Triablogue, or perhaps deny that he made it.  But I find it curious that he would prefer an atheist and an advocate of abortion–which is in my book the killing of youngest, poorest and most innocent human beings–over evangelicals who drive SUVs.  Given that  abortions in the last few decades number in the 100s of millions, it is a genocide of epic proportions.  Millions of Rauser’s own contemporaries have already been snuffed out  (as he was born circa 1975, after Roe vs. Wade).

I wonder also about the finances of Taylor Seminary.  I know that they recently went through a financial restructuring.  Hey, all you donors and friends of  Taylor Seminary and College. Do you live in a suburb?   Do you drive an SUV?  Perhaps you think that abortion is worse than driving a SUV.  Did you realize that your hard earned dollars were going to support a professor who thinks that your driving a SUV is damnable?  Perhaps it’s time you got on the phone with the president there.

I’ve written about this sort of thing before. As a donor to theological education, I don’t understand why I, a business man and an investor, have to donate to progressive education which is inimical to those who create wealth.  It’s a contradiction and an absurdity, when the livelihood of those who teach in theological education depends wholly on such people.  For if we let this sort of thing continue, we will end up with theological students like PoserorProphet, and it is a waste of our money to help him along his way so he can teach others to be anarcho-marxist-zealot Christians like himself.

Signed,

A suburban driver of a big fat SUV (but only when my wife lets me drive it), who “tithes” a mere 2.64% on average

Theological Education Bubble I : exegesis

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As a visiting professor in an African school that taught to the Master’s level I was once confronted with student who plagiarized a paper and failed the class as a result.  The academic dean pleaded with me to give him a third chance after the student failed the mandatory remedial session with me.  Thus, I permitted the student to take an oral examination, but he gave the most absurd answers to the most rudimentary questions of biblical history, such as he could not tell me the order of the empires, Persians, Greeks and Romans.  Later, I was told that this student was a womanizer who spent as much time in the local neighborhood chasing skirt as he spent in class.  It was hardly any surprise that he couldn’t pass his course with me.  But to my chagrin, this student went on to defend his master’s thesis and graduated, while the course he had with me was pre-requisite to entering the final year at the master’s level–a course he never passed.  Now this man is apparently a Bible professor in the capital city of his country.

I present this anecdote only to say that sometimes the diploma from a school is a meaningless paper, inflated like so much fiat money that is printed endlessly to the point of being worth nothing.  Perhaps this story is a no-brainer.  What should we do with an incompetent womanizer?   Fail him of course.  He has no business having a theological degree.

But what if it is the case of an extremely brilliant but wrong-headed student?  I have become somewhat of a nemesis to PoserorProphet, a self-stylized biblical scholar who is finishing his Master’s degree at Regent College.  And yet he has serious problems in biblical interpretation.  But he is able to defend his point, albeit with subtle and specious arguments, with such brilliance that he could easily pass any academic program at a secular university.  So now it puts theological educators in an awkward position:  are we to serve the church and the Kingdom of God, or are we to serve secular academic standards?  If the student can put together a specious heretical argument for a position, does that mean he deserves to pass so that he can then serve his heresy to the world, but now bearing the recognition of a theological degree from a once reputable institution?  Or should the school risk legal sanction for failing a student who is brilliant, academically gifted and yet theological off-the-wall?  There is a great deal at stake here.  I don’t see that there is simple answer.  But as a teacher of exegesis and biblical interpretation I have some serious problems with what I see.

We have had lengthy discussions with this student, PoserorProphet, who though attending an evangelical school has openly advocated full equal rights to practicing homosexuals in the church; the acrobatics that it takes to get around the biblical prohibition against homosexuality is already reason to have grave concerns.  But this student, in his embrace of liberation theology, has also taken passages like “Thou shalt not steal” to mean something like, “Thou shalt not not share”, thus twisting the plain sense of the text.  But then he also has recently advocated vandalism, such as done by anarchist demonstrators, through the texts recounting Jesus’ cleansing the temple, Jesus’ allowing the demons called “Legion” to enter into and kill a herd of swines and Jesus’ tacit approval of the the digging up of the roof to lower the paralytic, thus doing property damage to the house.  The main difficulty is that the Bible isn’t teaching that it is ok for us to go out and vandalize to support a higher cause, i.e., the poor and marginalized.  It has another agenda about which PoserorProphet seems quite unconcerned.  Through his exegesis, the Bible serves his liberation agenda.  In a discussion over at the City of God, I said that his “exegesis” is like that of the Marxist in the Fiddler on the Roof:  He recounts how Laban cheated Jacob, causing him to marry Leah while the original contract gave Jacob the right to marry Rachel.  Now, Laban required Jacob to work another seven years to pay for Rachel.  The Marxist’s conclusion:  The Bible teaches us that you can never trust an employer!  See the clip at 1:07:

Even the milkman’s daughter can see through this Marxist interpretation.  It is a moment of light humor.  But PoserorProphet is not joking.  He’s serious.  And yet his interpretations are hardly less ridiculous.

As an undergraduate in Dr. Pecota’s Principles of Interpretation course, I was required to read James Sire’s Scripture Twisting: 20 ways cults misread the Bible (see this summary). Part of the art of biblical interpretation is knowing how not to do it.  So Sire’s book is a lesson in good interpretation by avoiding pitfalls.  PoserorProphet actually commits a fair number of these 20 ways of twisting Scripture:  I would mention: 11. Selective citing; 12. Inadequate evidence; 14. Ignoring alternate explanations; 18. Supplementing biblical authority (with such writers as Michel Foucault!); 19. Rejecting biblical authority; and 20. World-view confusion (confusing his anarchist views with the Bible).  Thus, a basic undergraduate course in theology already would provide the ability to see how PoserorProphet is twisting the Bible, and yet today, it is apparently ok for him to defend a Master’s thesis in biblical studies.  There is no questioning his brilliance.  It is his judgment that I challenge.  But is it the task of theological education to produce brilliant heretics?  Or are we rather to produce graduates who will serve the church and the Kingdom of God.  If we knowingly pass even one such student, does that not call into question the whole enterprise?

The recognition that a theological diploma establishes should not be considered lightly.  Since the early church, Christian heretics have sought recognition from authorities who stood in apostolic succession.  For example, according to Irenaeus, Marcion once approached Polycarp and made a request:  “Recognize me.”  Polycarp responded in a manner which I think was appropriate, “I recognize you; I recognize the first-born of Satan.”  Polycarp was following the example that Paul laid down (Tit. 3.10-11):

As for a man who is factious, after admonishing him once or twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is perverted and sinful; he is self-condemned.

Discipleship vs. Seminary: the medium is the message

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Discipleship and school are two different media for learning.  If we take the model of Jesus and his disciples and contrast it with theological seminary, we can see significant differences that may help us to address the malaise with which many experience seminary education.  The premise of this post is that the medium is the message.  This phrase, which was coined by the Canadian scholar Marshal McLuhan, means that the vehicle of the message is not irrelevant because it superimposes its own biases on the message’s content.

Seminary is curriculum-oriented and knowledge-based. Every seminary program has a set of core courses and electives which are designed to give the student knowledge related to their desired field.  Students spend the better part of three years increasing their knowledge.  No proximity to teachers is necessary, because it is the teacher’s knowledge which is being passed on.  A student may easily attain the professor’s knowledge through reading a book or from attending a lecture.  Students must write tests and papers in order to demonstrate adequate mastery of the material, i.e., to show that they know the curriculum.  The character of the professor is practically irrelevant, because it’s not about passing on habits but knowledge.  Discipleship is incarnational and relationship oriented.  Jesus is the Word incarnate who represents God on earth and shows what God is like to a world estranged from him.  Jesus called disciples to imitate him.  In order for this incarnational ministry to happen, Jesus called his disciples to be with him and learn to do the things that he did.  Discipleship training focuses on the character of the disciple. Direct contact with the teacher is indispensable.

Seminary is individualistic. Apart from a few discussion oriented seminar classes and group projects, which are rare, seminary learning takes place in isolation.  The student is alone in the large lecture hall as he listens to the professor’s monologues.  Question and answer time is limited.  The professors and students have little leisure time to sit and discuss the material.  Students receive assignments of reading books and research papers which are largely done in complete isolation.  Discipleship is community oriented. Jesus was with his disciples for three years.  They followed him as he taught the people and challenged the religious leaders of his day. Even when Jesus sent them out on a mission, he sent them two by two, so that they would not be alone.  Much of the learning takes place during meals and other intimate occasions.  Even the application process, “Master, where are you staying” (John 1.38) suggests that the potential disciples were asking, “Teacher, how can we spend time with you?”

Seminary is focused on diplomas.  The goal of seminary education is the reception of the prize, the MDiv degree, which will become the key to opening doors to church ministries.  The MDiv is not, however, an interchangeable degree, because every denomination has its own requirements and may require the student to take further courses in their own church’s seminary in order to qualify for ministry.  Unfortunately, the number of students with diplomas often exceeds the number of open positions.  So it is not uncommon for graduates to languish never actually attaining their goals despite jumping through the necessary hoops.  Discipleship is focused on mission. When Jesus finished three years with his disciples, he sent them once again on a mission that had the world as its focus (Acts 1.8).  The purpose of all the training was not the attaining of the title, “apostle”, but the construction of the church.  No one will ultimately languish in unemployment because the church’s mission has not yet been accomplished.

Seminary focuses mainly on theoretical learning. The seminary seldom teaches anything hands-on.  To be sure, MDiv students must go through an internship or practicum.  But this is church-based training that usually has little connection with the seminary, as it is farmed out to local churches.  Very rarely the students are exposed to a real situation, such as when Michael Green took Regent students on evangelistic missions to Victoria, UBC campus, and Penticton (I participated in both all three of these).  Many educational programs have similar emphasis on theoretical learning.  I was once surprised to meet a petroleum engineer who claimed that he never studied at University.  And yet today, four years of theoretical learning with no hands on experience is required for entry-level engineering jobs, and the graduate really begins to learn how to be an engineer in his first job.  The same is true of seminary.  The focus of the training is on the theory and the students remained oddly disconnected from the task.  Discipleship’s main learning method is supervised doing. Discipleship is an apprenticeship, where the apprentice first watches the master, then he practices the craft in front of the master, and finally he learns to work independently of the master’s watchful eye.  In the gospels, we see the disciples watching Jesus, doing and being sent out to do; and then finally at the end of three years (a fairly standard period for an apprenticeship in many trades), we see that Jesus departs and leaves it to his disciples to do the work.  To be sure, Jesus also taught theory, but this was in the context of doing.  So for example, he first taught the crowd but then fed them, using the disciples to distribute the loaves and fishes—the practical and theoretical were integrated in the training process.

Seminary leads to conformity. I asked my wife if she could add something to my list and she suggested this.  Schooling requires that everyone learn the same thing, in a structured setting.  This is difficult of course for squirming boys.  So much of the potential and vivacity of our young people is squandered in making them sit in conformity of the classroom.  The same is true even up to the seminary level; everyone is required to study the same core courses if they want the diploma, even those courses for which they have little interest.  Discipleship helps people learn how their particular gifting fits into the whole. Jesus’ disciples did not all function in the same way.  Judas was a treasurer, though he did a bad job. Peter was apparently groomed for leadership.  In a community it is natural for each person to find their niche and make their contribution because it is organic and living.

Seminary is expensive and runs as a business. Many of the choices that seminaries make are based upon sound business decisions.  Programs and courses may be eliminated because they are not cost effective.  The treatment of employees is related to budgetary considerations.  It also means that seminary admits students into the program that may have shown no demonstrable calling to ministry, because as paying clients the seminary has little choice but to accept them.  The seminary acts as a supplier of theological education and the student as the client.  Discipleship is inexpensive and is closer to the model of the family. Jesus didn’t charge his disciples tuition but rather allowed them to eat the bread bought from the community purse.  So essentially, they were paid to be his disciples.  Jesus taught that God was their Father and that he was their brother.  They were to see themselves as the family of God—it wasn’t a supplier-client relationship.

Conclusion:

It should hopefully be clear now that there are aspects of discipleship training as modeled by Jesus that are clearly superior to seminary learning.  I believe that Ivan Illich was largely correct in his critiques about school (see esp. his classic, Deschooling Society), but our culture is stuck in the mud about school; the outlay of billions of dollars in education at all levels has unsatisfactory results and too little to show for the investments made.  Discipleship as a medium of learning recognizes one essential aspect of learning:  Education is more caught than taught. Having spent four years at Bible college, I was surprised to see so many of my fellow graduates contradict their college teachers and imitate the senior pastor of the first church for which they worked.  So even if the homiletics professor stressed good preparation before preaching, the senior pastor’s study habits instead became foundational for that graduate’s later career.  This is also true of how pastors handle money and a whole host of other issues.  It is as though the information learned during those four years of college went in one ear and out the other.

Furthermore, the seminary teaches not only through the curriculum but through its own actual practice of ministry.  So if the seminary underpays or otherwise abuses its workers, we should not be surprised if churches do the same.  If the professors are aloof, lazy, abusive or arrogant, is anyone surprised when their graduates manifest similar characteristics?  Discipleship training, by the bias of its medium, places far more emphasis on character—doing what the master does, becoming like the master, treating people the way the master does.  So when choosing a master, does the apprentice seek out the least successful of the town’s craftsmen? Do they want to study under the one whom nobody likes because he is ornery or a cheat?  No indeed.  An apprentice will seek out the most successful of masters, just as the disciples sought Jesus by asking him, “Master, where are you staying?”  The disciples will learn to do ministry the way the master does, and hopefully, they will be able to replicate their master’s success.

Further Reading:  John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing us down: The hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling, 1992. Neil Postman, Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business, 1985.

This post is intended as a response to a comment by Elderj at Wayne Park’s blog.