Academic Quality

City Seminary's Educational Quality

City Seminary of Sacramento is dedicated to the training of pastors and ministry leaders for effective service throughout the world by providing quality distance education in the Reformed confessional tradition.

The data on this educational quality page are updated as of the end of each calendar year. The data shown on this page is from the end of 2025.

Faculty and Class Size

  • 100% of CSS faculty members have served or are currently serving in pastoral ministry.
  • Of the 10 faculty members in our regular teaching rotation, 6 hold M.Div. degrees (60%), 2 hold a Th.M. (20%) and 2 hold Doctoral (Ph.D. or D.Min.) degrees (20%).
  • Class sizes range from 3 to 19 students per course.
  • Total Student-to-faculty ratio is 3:1.

City Seminary intentionally keeps its student population and class sizes at a level where individual attention from faculty and staff provide a robust learning environment.

Graduate Employment Rates

CSS prepares students for active ministry. Historically, students graduating from CSS have either entered into, or continued, in active full-time or part-time ministry.

  • 80% of CSS graduates in 2023-2025 are known to be actively involved in the ministry as pastors, counselors, and Christian ministry workers.

Graduate Ordination Rates

  • 80% of CSS graduates in 2023-2025 who sought ordination were ordained through their church or denomination.

Student Satisfaction Rates

Course Evaluations play an important role in gauging academic quality and student outcomes at CSS. The following data is taken from course evaluations during the 2025 calendar year.

  • 95.5% of course evaluations indicated that students agree or strongly agree that they would recommend the program to a friend.
  • 98.3% of course evaluations indicated that students agree or strongly agree that the overall learning experience was valuable to them.

Graduation Rates

We had graduates in 2024 and 2026. The statistics here reflect students in process.   Graduation rates are calculated based on the number of students accepted into a degree program who complete their academic programs within 1 ½ times the normal amount of years. For MDiv and BDiv students, this is 8 years (5 x 1 ½ ) to finish their degree program. For MA and ATS students, this is 5 years (3 x 1 ½) to finish their degree program.

For 2025, there were no MDiv or BDiv students on which to report. Students who were currently active in these programs began their studies in 2021 and after. Reporting on graduation rates for these students will begin in 2029.

For 2025, there were no ATS or MATS students on which to report. Students who were currently active in these programs began their studies in 2023 and after. Reporting on graduation rates for these students will begin in 2028. There was one student in the MTS program who enrolled in 2020. This student did not graduate by the end of 2025, but is still progressing to complete their degree program.

  • Students who enrolled in the ATS program in 2020 that graduated before the end of 2025 – no data yet
  • Students who enrolled in the BDiv program in 2017 that graduated before the end of 2025 – no data yet
  • Students who enrolled in the MDiv program in 2017 that graduated before the end of 2025 – no data yet
  • Students who enrolled in the MATS program in 2020 that graduated before the end of 2025 – no data yet
  • Students who enrolled in the MTS program in 2020 graduated before the end of 2025 – 1 student, 0 graduates.

Persistence Rates

  • Student Persistence Rate: 81%

The combined English and Spanish student persistence rate is a measure (or percentage) of the 27 students enrolled in an academic program in 2025 who continued with their studies into 2026 (22 students).

At the start of 2025, 22 students were enrolled. An additional 5 students enrolled over the course of the year, while 5 withdrew. There were no graduations during 2025. This brought us into 2026 with 22 students enrolled.

  • Course Completion Rate: 76.3%

The course completion rate is based on the number of students who started and successfully completed their courses in 2025. This calculation includes students who are enrolled in a degree program and also probationary students who are deciding to commit to a program. Excluded are students who withdrew at the beginning of a course and those who were auditing a course for no grade. Of the 169 course enrollments considered, 129 were successfully completed.

Program Learning Outcomes

CSS programs of study are built around program learning outcomes. These are outcomes that students are expected to demonstrate upon graduation from their program of study. Program learning outcomes for each academic program can be found in the Academic Catalog.

The program learning outcome demonstrated in 2025 was especially PLO #2: “Demonstrate competence in the methods of Church history, ability to use Van Tillian presuppositional apologetics, and properly defend Biblical inspiration, inerrancy, and the Ecclesiastical text.” The students assessed on this measurement strongly demonstrated satisfactory attainment of this learning outcome.  (For 2025, 86% of students scored at 80% or above on the assessments of this outcome, and all students achieved acceptable demonstration.)

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