Religion : Yale Divinity School to Institute Reforms : Education: Panel urged faculty cuts and more selectivity in admissions. But program won’t veer from its mission of training students for ordination.

Long criticized for its lax admission standards and financial woes, Yale Divinity School has agreed to decrease the size of its faculty and become more selective in admitting students.

But the graduate school will not veer from its traditional mission of training students for ordination to the ministry, even though other universities have channeled their divinity schools toward a more academic pursuit of religious studies.

“I’m thrilled,” said outgoing Divinity School Dean Thomas Ogletree, whose five-year term recently expired. “We have the unequivocal affirmation of the provost. . . . The rumors about the demise of the school are over.”

A recent report from an internal review committee evaluating the graduate program recommended that the school turn away more prospective students and reduce its enrollment from 370 to 270 over the next eight years.

The divinity school has been criticized by university authorities for admitting as many as 80% of its applicants, far more than Yale’s other graduate schools.

Annual tuition at the divinity school is $11,400, making it “one of the two or three most expensive in the country,” the committee noted. Its report recommended that the university step up recruitment to increase its applicant pool by 50% in the next five years, and set aside more money for scholarships to enable the school to attract “the best and the brightest.”

The committee also recommended that the faculty be pared from 34 to 28, a cutback that will fall particularly hard on female professors because women make up a high percentage of the junior faculty and will have little chance for promotion to the senior faculty.

Questions about the school’s future were raised earlier this year when Yale President Richard C. Levin ordered a top-to-bottom review of the divinity school to address concerns that the college was not selective enough and had allowed its campus to fall into disrepair.

But the main question facing the committee was whether the school, founded in 1701 by Congregational ministers, was fulfilling a useful mission as part of a major secular university.

It was a question that raised concerns among the faculty and students. The divinity school student council issued its own report last spring, saying students were “thoroughly demoralized” that the university “did not value the divinity school or its students.”

The recent report by the review committee, however, validated the school’s traditional mission.

More than half of the students currently enrolled in Yale’s divinity school are earning master of divinity degrees, and many go on to seek ordination.

That is in contrast to divinity schools at Harvard and the University of Chicago, which have taken a strongly academic direction. Harvard is known for its courses in world religions and Chicago for its vigorous research programs.

Only a third of the Harvard students and less than 15% of the Chicago students aspire to the pulpit, according to statistics of the Assn. of Theological Schools in Pittsburgh.

The committee report was endorsed by senior university officers, who said they would adopt most of its recommendations.

“The report articulates with cogence and eloquence the mission of the school, which spans the preparation of individuals for ordination, the academic study of religion, and theological education as a basis for leadership in many walks of life,” said Alison F. Richard, Yale’s chief academic and financial officer. “I am pleased to endorse its strong reaffirmation.”

Ogletree--who will stay on as dean until the school appoints a successor--said he was extremely gratified by the report. “It basically reaffirms our mission and indeed much of the planning work we have been doing over the last five years.”

Students, too, were pleased--in a restrained sort of way.

“It doesn’t sound as dismal as it might have been,” said Mary Ellen O’Driscoll, who is working toward a master of divinity degree.