LCMS Convention Workbook St. Louis, Missouri — 1981, Page 252

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252

based plan of general education for either a bachelor of arts or
bachelor of science degree that has a validity and integrity of
its own for individual advancement and that is also a desirable
foundation for graduate and professional education.

The Liberal Arts Program at St. John’s provides a Christian
education for students whose interests lie outside of the
college’s programs for professional church-work careers or
business-related careers.

The Liberal Arts Program provides an academic program
for those students who wish to attend St. John’s College but
who are undecided about the selection of a specific area of
study and about long-term vocational goals.

The Liberal Arts Program provides a pool of students from
which the college has the opportunity to recruit young people
for professional church-work programs.

The Liberal Arts Program allows students to satisfy an
interest in several fields of knowledge by sampling a variety of
ideas for either vocational-goal selection or advancement of
personal intellectual or aesthetic growth.

The Liberal Arts Program allows students freedom and
flexibility in designing their educational programs.

The Liberal Arts Program offers students a choice in
seleting either a specific subject-area major or a broad com-
posite major.

The Business Program

The Business Program at St. John’s College is a four-year
plan of study leading to the bachelor of science in business
degree and emphasizing small-business organization and
management. It prepares graduates for entry into business
and business-related careers and into graduate and profes-
sional schools for which an undergraduate degree in business
is required or recommended. It also offers desirable electives
for any student who has personal and professional contact
with the business environment.

Thestrengths of the program are the Business Core, a body
of business subjects required of all graduates, the flexibility in
the selection of business electives, and the program emphasis
upon small-business organization and management of small
business. The program extends and broadens an area of study
that has been a part of the college’s curriculum since its
founding in 1893. Therefore it builds upon the traditions of the
college in business study and upon its experience in designing
and offering such programs.

The importance of the business program for The Lutheran
Church—Missouri Synod lies in its capacity to—

1) train administrators in the service and employ of the
Synod;

2) train Christian businessmen and women who appreciate
and support the church;

3) train parish-worker students as administrative and
office-support personnel for the congregations of the Synod;

4) offer desirable electives that enrich the programs of
study of church-vocation students; and

5) attract students to the college who can be recruited for
transfer into church-vocation programs.

The business program is an especially attractive course of
study for the residents of the Winfield community and therefore
fills a specific need for professional and vocational education
locally. The program is integrated with the course offerings in
business at Southwestern College to provide a very desirable
variety of business and business-education opportunities
without duplication of courses.

The program is so structured that it is coordinated fully
with the two-year programs in business administration that
the college will continue to offer for those seeking more
immediate preparation for employment.

Finances and Fiscal Stability

The college currently is fiscally stable and has prospects for
maintaining fiscal stability in the period immediately ahead.

The college projects an enrollment increase of 100 students
for the 1981—82 academic year. The increase in income from
student fees and auxiliary services as a result of that increase
is estimated to be $300,000.

The college will continue the consortium arrangement with

HIGHER EDUCATION

Southwestern College. As a result of the provisions of this
cooperative arrangement, the additional staff required to carry
out the four-year program will be minimal.

Inflation has caused deficit spending for three of the last

four years. The consortium arrangement allows the college to
increase the size of its student body without much of the
overhead cost normally associated with the offering of four-
year baccalaureate degree programs and at the same time to
offset the fiscally eroding effects of inflation.

The college has no indebtedness on any of its properties.
The present debt of $84,635, which is owed to the treasury of the
Synod, is the result of deficit spending as a junior college
during three of the past four academic years.

The college already has adequate classrooms and residence-
hall space to accommodate a student body of approximately
500 students. In addition, the college has the support facilities
such as a physical-education building, library, and a food-
service center needed to support a student population of 500
students.

The college’s Alumni Association has more than one-half
million dollars in endowment funds dedicated to the support of
the college. The endowment funds provide scholarships for
students attending the college.

Although the college has an operating indebtedness of
$84,635 with the Synod, the college also has $100,000 from the
sale of property invested with the Synod’s Church Extension
Fund. The interest received from this investment is to be used
to defray operating expenses.

Enrollment

St. John’s College serves and draws the majority of its
students from a geographical section of the Synod that has the
population potential to supply the 450—500 students for which
the college is planning. The college’s primary recruitment area
extends across the south-central Middle West and the north-
central Southwest and encompasses the Kansas, Oklahoma.
and Colorado Districts together with portions of the Mid-South
and Texas Districts. This primary recruitment area is com-
posed of Districts of the Synod that, for their membership, have
some of the highest productivity ratios of any Districts of the
Synod. (Productivity ratio is the yield of church-vocation
students from total communicant membership.)

The College currently recruits about 70 percent of its total
enrollment from its primary recruitment area.

Demographic studies of the college’s primary recruitment
area project for Kansas a decline of about 15 percent by 1993 in
the number of seniors who will graduate from high school but
stability or moderate increases for the period in the number of
high schoo] seniors for Colorado, Arkansas, and the northern
Texas.

The trend in the number of confirmation of juniors is one of
decline in the Kansas and Oklahoma Districts, but the degree
of sharpness of the decline appears to have bottomed out and
the trend may subsequently be one of increase as the result of
recent increases in birth rates and infant baptisms. The
projections for Colorado and Arkansas indicate for the long-
term a relatively stable student population on the basis of
baptisms and junior confirmations.

The college continues to attract principally students who
express membership preferences for The Lutheran Church—
Missouri Synod. It is the policy of the college that the consti-
tuency of the Synod continue to be the dominant segment of the
student population.

The college is strategically located in the south-central
Middle West, so situated that it can serve well geographical
areas of the Synod not within the main recruitment territories
of Synod’s other colleges.

The primary recruitment area of the college uses a substan-
tial percentage of the graduates of the Synod’s colleges and
seminaries. That area, accordingly, should have an educa-
tional setting that is accessible, so that it can return students to
the Synod’s pool of professional workers in response to the use
of workers from which it has benefited in the past. One of the
considerations is that distance to attend a synodical college is
a factor in determining attendance at a synodical school,
especially during the early undergraduate years. The converse
is not readily supported—namely, that if a school is not
conveniently accessible, then students will attend other col-

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