A philosopher elsewhere writes:
Our university has for many years run a small stand-alone Masters in Philosophical Theology. It spends 2/3 of its time teaching analytic philosophy and another third on historical figures who are both philosophers and Christian theologians. Members of the philosophy faculty do most of the teaching. It has evolved into a good feeder Masters program; over the last decade, most of the top 20 PhD programs in philosophy have accepted a least one of our students. For historical reasons, though, it is and will remain under the aegis of the religion department. The religion department is now floating a proposal to kill it, and replace it with a "philosophical" track within the Masters in Theology. Effectively, they want to absorb the PT program within that broader degree.
The religion chair thinks this will be merely a name change. I think this name-change will damage the program. The PT program gets only students who want to move into a philosophy doctorate. Most of these would not even look at a “Masters in Theology” to see if it has a philosophical track, as a “Masters in Theology” does not look like a philosophy credential. And while a degree called "philosophical theology" has (on the evidence) been a good credential for a top doctoral program, a degree called "Masters in Theology" would have no CV value or even be a slight negative. Competent advisors will tell students this, and so this will further reduce applications. There is no evidence that theology students are waiting in the wings to make up the numbers of philosophy students the name-change would lose us. So I think this would probably reduce applicant numbers greatly.
My correspondent wondered what reads of this blog would think; ergo a poll:
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