Sydney College of Divinity (SCD)

Sydney College of Divinity (SCD) is the trading name of the Sydney College of Divinity Ltd, a not-for-profit company owned by an ecumenical consortium of private colleges. The College has been training theologians and equipping people for ministry since 1983, when the first SCD degree, a Bachelor of Theology (BTh), was accredited. The approval of the BTh was made retrospective to 1 January 1982.

SCD was incorporated on 25 September 1983 and its initial and focal degree, the BTh, was approved by the NSW Higher Education Board on 17 February 1984. This approval was made retrospective to 2 January 1982, so that students who had already been engaged in the three-year program could complete the requirements for the degree by the end of 1984. The first graduation was held in 1985.

Approval of SCD as a Higher Education Provider was received 26 November 2004 and CRICOS (Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students) approval was received on 29 May 2008 (previously CRICOS approval was held by Member Institutions (MIs). Approval to be a Tuition Assurance Scheme Operator had been received earlier on 23 November 2004. SCD was granted Self-Accrediting Authority on 22 June 2016.

The six founding MIs, with their church affiliations, were:

• The Baptist Theological College (Baptist)

• The Catholic Institute of Sydney (Roman Catholic)

• The Churches of Christ in NSW Theological College (Churches of Christ)

• St Paul's National Seminary (Roman Catholic)

• The Union Theological Institute (Roman Catholic)

• The United Theological College (Uniting Church}.

Institutional membership has changed over the years and extended beyond NSW.

The changes in institutional membership have come to be based more on strategic than on theological concerns. After many years of debate about the accreditation of theological higher education in NSW, the eventual establishment of SCD came about following the Higher Education Board's direction to theological institutions that they should rationalise resources and establish a degree−supervision authority administered by the institutions on the model of the Melbourne College of Divinity, that is, a consortium of teaching colleges whose degrees would be administered by a supervisory authority established by those colleges. SCD was therefore built on the existing operations of separate MIs that were now scrutinised and quality−guaranteed through collaborative committees, supported by a shared employed executive. Academic processes were, from the beginning, vested in an Academic Board, albeit a largely representational one, whose major committee became the Academic Standards Committee, again, largely representational. This general situation pertained till the 2007 application for re-accreditation.

SCD was already aware of the need to address new developments in higher education when its re−registration at the end of 2006 came with the stipulation that SCD was the 'Principal', and its MIs its 'Agents'. Since late 2006, the College has vigorously undertaken substantial revision of its structures, policies, and procedures in the broad direction of greater internal cohesion and operational centralisation.

In 2018 undergraduate and postgraduate coursework awards were delivered in English medium through the individual MIs and in Korean medium through the Korean School of Theology, which was founded under collective ownership in 2010. The research degrees are delivered through another collectively owned enterprise, the Graduate Research School. All SCD awards are delivered on the basis of a single shared curriculum and central academic governance structure.
In the 1990s a combined Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Theology program was offered between the Faculty of Arts and the SCD.