# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S862
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 165

The significant features of the third forecast are the following:

1. It begins with the number of ministerial graduates (125)
which is actually in prospect for 1950.

2. It terminates, in 1980, with a number of graduates (350)
which is the approximate minimum number which, in the
carefully: considered opinion of your Board, is absolutely
necessary if Synod maintains its current rate of growth.
Your Board believes unqualifiedly that Synod must strive
to keep up its present rate of growth.

3. It does not disturb the highly conservative estimates of
the first forecast. It merely acts to advance the terminal
estimate of the first forecast from 1980 to about 1967. The
first forecast estimated that Synod will need an average of
210 ministerial graduates in the decade 1970 to 1980. This
would mean about 220 graduates at the end of the decade.
The third forecast indicates that about 220 graduates may
be needed some thirteen years earlier, i.e., by 1967.

Conclusions

:.. The Board for Higher Education proposes that the number

tof ministerial graduates indicated by the third forecast be accepted

tentatively as the probable number of graduates which Synod is
tlikely to need over the next thirty years.

At the same time the following implications of the foregoing

proposal should be noted with particular care.

1. It is neither necessary nor desirable, at this early date, to
plan in any conclusive manner the capacity and the policy
requirements of our educational system for the entire span
of thirty years.

2. All that is immediately necessary, so far as plant capacity
and operating policy are concerned, is to make sure that
our system of schools will be able to accommodate enough
students so that 200 ministerial graduates can be produced
by 1964. Thus, by planning now to be able to produce 200
graduates by 1964, we shall at one and the same time be
pursuing a thoroughly conservative and cautious course of
action, and shall also be preparing ourselves sufficiently to
be able, after 1964, to produce a larger number of graduates:
if this should then prove to be necessary. By preparing now
for 200 graduates by 1964, we shall do no more than we
shall have to do in any event a few years after 1964.
Preparation for such a capacity involves absolutely no fore-
seeable hazard. There can be no question about it that even
under the most unfavorable conditions we shall need 200