# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1956_S248
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

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SEMINARIES AND COLLEGES 247

and discovered that many of Synod’s institutions then already had
increased their student charges by as much as 200 and 300 per cent
over low depression levels. The Board then reported the con-
clusion that “under these circumstances it will readily be agreed
that it will not be possible to make any appreciable increases in
the cost of such education (to the students) without adversely
affecting the enrollment of students” (Proceedings, 1950, p. 301).

A parallel recent development and a parallel caution could be
expressed regarding the fees for room and board as they affect
the individual institution and its students.

While Synod has never totally forbidden the enrollment of
students in colleges and seminaries who did not intend to prepare
for the church professions — and in fact, during the decade from
1930 to 1940, explicitly sought to attract such students as a possible
source of economic relief to the synodical budget —Synod for
many years has sought to collect a so-called “synodical tuition”
as a special fee levied on nonprofessional students. In a sense there
has been a double delusion attached to this special fee. Despite
the action of the Houston Convention in increasing the amount of
the synodical tuition to be charged by all of Synod’s colleges and
seminaries over amounts prevalent for many years, the amount
charged never yet has been successful in passing on to the general
student his fair share of the actual educational costs incurred on
his behalf. On the other hand, the imposition of this special fee,
as defined by Synod, has led some to believe that other tuitions
and educational fees are not to be assessed and collected from
pastoral and teacher-training students. Probably no other single
item has been so irritating and so troublesome in the business
management of the institutions as has the equitable assessment
and collection of this special fee, particularly from such students
who have secured one or more years of their education under
synodical auspices and whose vocational intent has changed at
a time when they are not in residence on campus.

As the number of buildings owned by Synod on its campuses
has risen and as their value has increased significantly, the prob-
lem of continuing obsolescence looms ever larger. Proper steward-
ship of capital investment in plant should provide for a continuous
program of replacement of obsolete facilities and of systematic
remodeling. Often in Synod’s history this problem of continuing
obsolescence has not been regularly met, and the result has been
that the deferred costs of meeting inescapable obsolescence have
loomed larger and larger, chiefly because no regular provision of
funds could be made on the basis of the prevailing synodical policy
of supplying major capital improvement funds only as they became
available through cash remittances for the annual current budget