The principal means for educating Nonconformist ministers were the various denominational colleges .sx All the major denominations made great strides between 1870 , when Board schools began supplementing the work done by older bodies to give elementary education to working people , and the end of the century , in creating a ministry with at least some higher education .sx In those years the number of Wesleyan ministers without any college training dropped by 51 per cent and the number of those attending a theological college rose by 46 per cent .sx Baptists saw the number of ministers without any college training drop by 32 per cent while those going to a college rose by twenty per cent .sx Those with a university degree rose by twelve per cent .sx For Congregationalists the percentage with a college training remained , surprisingly , the same .sx Primitive Methodists made the greatest strides of all :sx the number of their ministers without any college training fell by 60 per cent while the number with , rose by 59 per cent .sx Naturally , much depended on the quality of the education these men received .sx The older colleges , which traced their history back to the eighteenth century's 'dissenting academies' had not kept the high standing they had then enjoyed .sx In the 1870s R. F. Horton's father , himself a Congregational minister , refused to let his son enter a Congregational college because , he wrote , " there is not one of them fit for you to enter .sx The professors are of an inferior order , and very few of the students even approach mediocrity .sx " Charles Brown recalled Bristol Baptist College when he was there from 1879 to 1882 :sx there was only one instructor while the course was " not altogether satisfactory " .sx The other change which took place was the growth of a minority who went on to take advantage of new opportunities to get a university degree .sx The number of men in all four major denominations who had done a university degree more than doubled between 1870 and 1900 , from 14 to 37 per cent .sx The traditional dependence on Scottish universities was replaced by the expanding university college system , London University and the Victoria University group of colleges .sx It was a sizeable achievement .sx The distance that had to be covered can be seen in the case of the Primitive Methodists :sx they had no theological college until 1881 and when the new college in Manchester faced collapse it was only saved by the generosity of Sir William Hartley .sx It was he who persuaded A. S. Peake to leave Merton College , Oxford , for Manchester in 1892 .sx Peake introduced Greek , increased the course from one year to two and increased accommodation to sixty .sx Even so , expenditure per student , admittedly only a rough guide , fell from pounds81 per student in 1890 to pounds38 in 1901 ; it was not unusual for the college to spend more on the gardens than on buying books .sx Again , entrance to the probationary ministry , from which students were taken , was controlled by the districts , not the college .sx The problem was too many men applying for too few places ; in 1895 , eighty - seven men passed the required examination for the ministry although the college still had only sixty places .sx Even for those sixty , there were only vacancies in the circuits for twenty-seven .sx For their part , Congregationalists suffered from a glut of colleges :sx there were eight in England , three in Wales and one in Scotland .sx There was virtually no denominational control .sx All was left " to the working of chance or of economic forces .sx .. Clearly this is a thoroughly British policy , but it is also thoroughly pagan .sx " If a man had a 'call' to a chapel he could become a minister without any denominational approval and with no educational qualifications required .sx Even so , by the beginning of the new century only six per cent of the ministers newly appointed to a church were without some form of higher education .sx Again , as with the Primitive Methodists , there were too many men chasing too few churches :sx 223 ministers in 1901 could not find a church .sx Expenditure in the various colleges varied tremendously :sx in Nottingham Institute ( admittedly non-residential ) it was pounds30 on each of its 60 students ; Western College in Plymouth spent pounds136 but it had only fourteen students .sx As a general rule , expenditure only rose as enrolment fell .sx Baptists had six colleges in England and two in Wales although in 1904 the number was reduced to four in England through amalgamation .sx After 1893 expenditure fell although enrolment remained virtually at the 1890 level .sx Expenditure varied enormously :sx Regent's Park College in London spent pounds140 on each of its twenty-nine students in 1901 , while Pastor's College , founded by Spurgeon in 1856 , spent pounds64 on each of its sixty men .sx There were certain problems common to all nineteen denominational colleges :sx the first was the quality of men who entered the ministry and from whom students were recruited .sx Only the Wesleyans had a system whereby the national organization had any control and even they had problems .sx For the other three bodies the problem was the same :sx either the districts ( for Primitive Methodists ) or the individual chapels ( for Congregationalists and Baptists ) allowed men into the ministry who had no academic qualifications .sx Some colleges , such as Pastor's , existed specifically in order to train men who would not put off people by too much learning .sx Again , some colleges were simply too small and had too little money :sx the Primitive Methodist college had only one tutor until Peake arrived .sx In 1901 the Congregationalists' Western and Hackney Colleges had only fourteen and twenty-one students respectively while the Baptists' Nottingham and Bristol colleges had only eleven and twenty-one .sx With so many colleges there simply were not enough funds to go round :sx a twelve year survey ( 1890-1901 ) of the Baptist colleges shows that of eighty-five annual budgets for which there is full evidence , fifty-five had over-spent .sx As a general rule the only way to spend more per student was to have fewer students .sx The colleges' incomes were either constant or declining .sx The greatest problem , therefore , was not in getting men into the colleges but in raising the level of the education they received once they were there .sx Wesleyan colleges were established as theological training centres but Baptist and Congregational colleges , because of their origins as dissenting academies , still had a bias towards giving a general arts education and not just a theological training .sx As there was no national system of state secondary schools until 1902 there was a constant struggle between those who wanted to raise the level of theological education in the colleges and those who knew that many of the men coming into them had nothing but a primary school education .sx Charles Brown , for example , was born in Northamptonshire in 1855 and had to go to work as a boy when his father , an agricultural labourer earning 12s .sx a week , was taken ill .sx The boy earned 1s .sx 6d .sx a week scaring birds away from crops .sx At fourteen he began to work as a postman at 2d .sx a round , one round each morning .sx He left home in 1871 to work in Birmingham , was converted during a Moody-Sankey campaign , and in 1879 entered Bristol Baptist College .sx It is not surprising that the course in Baptist and Congregational colleges ran to six years :sx there was a lot of ground to cover .sx Salvation came from without :sx the development of some de facto secondary work in the higher 'standards' or years of Board schools , the improvements in the older grammar schools , the use of various 'institutes' dedicated to helping working men get more education , the creation of new , civic universities like Owens in Manchester , and the expansion of London University , gave men who wanted a basic education beyond primary school new opportunities , after which they could go on to a denominational college which was now more able to concentrate on theology .sx The theological colleges were eager to take up the new opportunities and transfer the teaching of arts subjects to the new colleges and universities .sx In 1881 , for example , Lancashire Independent College abolished all preparatory classes as Owens College could do it so much better .sx When the Congregational Union officially urged this new course on the colleges in 1902 there was still a long way to go :sx A. M. Fairbairn warned Sir Alfred Dale , then Principal of University College , Liverpool , " I think one has to be very careful as to giving the theological colleges power over the regulation of degrees .sx You must not let them level down the University , but rather use your position to level them up .sx " .sx Wesleyans , along with Primitive Methodists , seemed less concerned with the need for an educated ministry than the Baptists and Congregationalists .sx They insisted their four colleges have a spirit which was " practical rather than academical " although it was agreed that the 254 places provided in the colleges were not enough by the end of the century .sx A committee was appointed to report on the situation in 1901 because Conference wanted to know how to secure candidates " of higher educational proficiency and others of special promise " and they wanted the committee's views on the " desirability of raising the standard of the examinations for the ministry " as well as the possible need to give candidates " a more thorough training .sx .. and a more complete equipment " .sx Two additional problems were shared by all denominations .sx The first concerned the large army of lay or local preachers :sx for every minister in the four leading denominations there were seven lay preachers .sx To on - lookers these men were seen in many cases as " Nonconformist ministers " and of many it could be said that " his prayer was like himself , rough and earnest " .sx All major denominations strove to raise standards for lay preachers ; methods chosen included free circulating libraries and denominational courses and examinations .sx The second problem was the influx of men trying to enter the ministry by the end of the century ; if we look at ministers actively engaged in church work in 1901 we see that three out of every ten Primitive Methodists , four out of every ten Wesleyans , five out of every ten Congregationalists and seven out of every ten Baptists had entered the ministry in the 1890s .sx ( Except for the Baptists the influx did not lower the trend towards a more educated ministry :sx the total of all Baptist ministers without any formal higher education was only eighteen per cent by 1901 .sx However among those men 'settled' in the 1890s it was over twice that , at 41 per cent .sx ) Unlike the Church of England , Nonconformity suffered not from too few but from too many candidates .sx There was a real embarrassment of riches .sx The problem of too many men wanting to become ministers and too many lay preachers who inevitably lowered the educational average pointed up a fundamental dilemma .sx Robertson Nicoll , with his journalistic exuberance , boasted in 1902 that " the average Dissenting minister has .sx .. a better literary and theological culture than the average minister of the Church [of England] " who were " the worst educated [ministry] in this country " .sx Against this was the tradition that Nonconformity was the religion of 'the people' and not of the 'privileged classes' .sx How far could a minister of the people be educated beyond their level ?sx When Spurgeon opened Pastor's College in 1856 some of the first pupils were illiterate but he insisted that his aim was to equip " a class of ministers who will not aim at lofty scholarship , but at the winning of souls - men of the people " .sx High standards of education were not needed for work among the " neglected classes , to whom a more cultured ministry would have appealed less strongly " .sx Yet the same writer lamented that some of the first students " in many cases alienated the more thoughtful minds from the denomination " .sx Primitive Methodists rejoiced that " we are of the people , and know their needs " yet , as we have seen , they were also glad that " our people are everywhere participating in the social and intellectual advance of the times " .sx We saw earlier that critics in Northampton had protested against what they called a " cultured ministry which .sx .. shoots over the heads of the people " .sx