Student Debt Reports
In the year of Spring 2017, 33% of our M.Div. graduates and 30% of our M.T.S. graduates borrowed over $40k. *
Eventually we found that in Spring 2108, over half of our M.Div. graduates are borrowing more than the national average (about $40k) across ATS schools, with 39% borrowing over $60k and 17% borrowing over $80k.
By Spring 2022, 71% of M.Div graduates had no VDS-related educational debt.
First Year Students Dashboard
Master of Divinity Students
Average First-Year Debt by Merit Scholarship Award
Master of Divinity Students
Average First-Year Debt by Merit Scholarship Award
Master of Divinity Students
Average First-Year Debt by Merit Scholarship Award
Master of Divinity Students
Average First-Year Debt by Merit Scholarship Award
Master of Divinity Students
Average First-Year Debt by Merit Scholarship Award
Master of Theological Students - Non-Borrowers
- 2016 - 2017 : 10 M.T.S. First-Years Borrowed Nothing (38%)
- 2017 - 2018 : 12 M.T.S. First-Years Borrowed Nothing (55%)
- 2018 - 2019 : 17 M.T.S. First-Years Borrowed Nothing (68%)
- 2019 - 2020 : 17 M.T.S. First-Years Borrowed Nothing (74%)
- 2020 - 2021 : 6 M.T.S. First-Years Borrowed Nothing (43%)
The data shows that merit scholarship award level is not a very reliable predictor of student debt levels. For the M.T.S. degree in 2021, compared to 2020, time to degree completion does NOT seem to correlate with higher debt (longer = higher debt).
Breakdown of Merit Scholarship Awards ALL FIRST-YEARS by Racial Identity
Merit scholarship awards are not a very reliable predictor of the level of debt a student will accrue.
Our second career students are once again shown to be taking on higher levels of debt than their younger peers. This is vastly different than the national data from ATS concerning second career student borrowing, which is usually significantly less than younger students.
*Research from The Auburn Center notes that total debt, including undergrad, beyond $30k will be difficult for most divinity school graduates to repay. None of the reports included undergraduate debt. Most years we observed disparities in the levels of indebtedness for students that identify as “White” and those that identify as underrepresented minorities (“Black,” “Hispanic,” and “Multi-Racial”) at Vanderbilt.