nation / world
Conservative US Rabbinical School
Slashes Tuition by Nearly 80%
JACKIE HAJDENBERG | JTA.ORG
M ark Asher Goodman is
beginning to imagine fi n-
ishing paying off roughly
$85,000 in student debt he incurred
while training to become a rabbi
— nearly two decades aft er he was
ordained. So when his rabbinical school, the
Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies,
announced last week that it was slash-
ing tuition by nearly 80%, he was
briefl y envious. Th en he was fi lled
with relief that future students at the
Conservative seminary, part of Los
Angeles’ American Jewish University,
won’t have the experience he did.

“I was a day school teacher and rabbi
for 12 years, and I made far less than
pulpit rabbis,” said Goodman, who
now leads one synagogue in Erie and
works at another in Pittsburgh. “To
force graduates into irrational fi nancial
choices due to their loan situations, in
any fi eld, is unfair.”
Ziegler’s new tuition is $7,000 a year,
down from $31,342 this year. Th e change
makes the school just 20% the price
of the Conservative movement’s larger
and older rabbinical school, the Jewish
Th eological Seminary in New York City.

Slashing tuition could seem counter-
intuitive for a school that is in so much
fi nancial distress — since 2018 it has
shuttered its undergraduate program,
sought renters for its space and, last
month, announced that it would sell its
35-acre campus.

But American Jewish University
administrators are betting that Ziegler’s
new list price will draw more students,
reversing a trend of declining enroll-
ment that has contributed to the school’s
fi nancial crisis. Just four students
enrolled at Ziegler this year; the school
ordained only two new rabbis in 2021.

Th ey also say they want to be on the
leading edge of a movement to make
rabbinical school accessible to a larger
and more diverse set of potential Jewish
leaders. Training to become a rabbi
typically requires fi ve years of courses
and fi eldwork, such as synagogue
internships, making the path burden-
14 An aerial view of American Jewish University’s Sunny & Isadore Familian Campus in the Bel Air neighborhood of
Los Angeles
Courtesy of Communications Department, AJU
some and in many cases impossible for
people who do not have family wealth.

Reducing tuition, Ziegler’s dean,
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson said,
“opens up the rabbinate to a much
broader pool.”
Artson said donations — rather
than, say, anticipated revenue from the
campus sale — were making possi-
ble the new tuition, which applies to
current students in addition to future
ones. Additional funds will cover tui-
tion completely while students study in
Israel during their third year, according
to the details of the new tuition plan.

He declined to name the people
who had given to support the initia-
tive, saying only that AJU possesses
an “extraordinary circle of philan-
thropists and community leaders who
understand that a literate, wise and
compassionate rabbinate holds the key
to energizing and strengthening the
Jewish future.”
It is unclear how much of a diff erence
Ziegler’s new price will make to indi-
vidual students, considering that many
were receiving substantial fi nancial aid
before. But the fl ashy price tag may make it
more appealing for aspiring rabbis in
the Conservative movement. At JTS,
the movement’s fl agship seminary, this
year’s tuition is over $36,000 — although
MARCH 31, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
few, if any, students there pay full price.

Th e price war comes in the con-
text of declining overall interest in the
rabbinate and in declining affi liation
by American Jews with Conservative
synagogues. Competition between the two
schools for students who want to
become Conservative rabbis “produces
constant incentives to improve and
to compete,” Artson said. He added,
“Th e challenge is in the context of that
healthy competition to realize we’re not
actually competing.”
A JTS spokesperson said that school
would continue to off er “substantial
tuition assistance, stipends, fellowships
and internship opportunities” to make
rabbinical school aff ordable for stu-
dents who enroll.

“We are delighted to hear about all
initiatives that assist students in pur-
suing a career in the rabbinate,” the
spokesperson said.

Th ere’s evidence that tuition incen-
tives could have the intended eff ect
— but also that increasing enrollment
may not be a panacea for the woes
facing a rabbinical school or its move-
ment. When Hebrew Union College in
Cincinnati off ered tuition incentives to
make attendance there relatively inex-
pensive compared to the Reform move-
ment’s campuses in New York and
Los Angeles, students chose Cincinnati
more oft en.

But when the incentives ended, the
campus again became the last choice
for Reform rabbinical students. Now,
the school is seeking to stop train-
ing rabbinical students in Cincinnati
entirely. Ziegler and American Jewish
University, too, face an uncertain
future. Th e Bel Air campus where
Ziegler has been housed since it opened
in 1996 is up for sale, and while the
university is retaining a diff erent parcel
of land, where it has housed a camp,
it’s not clear where future rabbinical
students will go to class aft er next year,
though administrators are emphasiz-
ing that learning will take place in
person. “Th ere will be a physical space, and it
will be holy,” Artson said.

Th ree rabbinical students deferred
enrollment last year to this fall, the
school said, but how many additional
students will enroll at Ziegler is unclear.

“Time will tell if that move will
counteract the uncertainty that comes
with the planned sale of the AJU’s
Familian Campus,” Goodman said
about the tuition reduction. “But in the
long run, making rabbinic school more
aff ordable is a net positive move for the
Jewish people.” JE