Theological Education and Government Money

Interesting article here on the extreme changes the theological education sector is going through in Oz. I would observe that many of the issues we face in NZ in theological education stem from needing to meet the requirements of secular education boards. Don't get me wrong, I am all for standards, and I think that offering it's own NZQA degree is the best thing possible for Carey to be doing right now for all sorts of reasons, but the dependence on government money does come at a price. That price needs to be reevaluated from time to time. The interesting thing is that the church seems to expect the bulk of the cost of training its leaders to be met by the government. In an increasingly secular world this seems decreasingly likely to be a sustainable option. I'm not so sure that it was ever a good idea.

Let me know what you think, :-)