Bangor Seminary ending degree programs
Bangor Theological Seminary plans to give degrees to about 45 students this spring—a large graduating class for a school that had only 13 graduates the year before. But it will be the last commencement in the seminary’s long history of serving rural churches in northern New England and beyond.
The nationwide downturn in seminary enrollment and other changes hit BTS hard beginning a decade ago and combined to write “finis” to Bangor’s role in credentialing candidates for ministry.
“Our enrollment has declined approximately 20 percent per year for the last three to four years,” BTS president Robert Grove-Markwood wrote a year ago in a letter to the seminary faculty, administrators and supporters. The total head count of seminarians had dropped from 147 to 78 in the period between 2006 and 2011.
