I found Hannah Vinueza McClellan’s report last week in Christianity Today fascinating—and if you have any connection to Christian higher ed, you should read it too. A taste from her argument: Â
Thirty evangelical colleges and universities saw significant enrollment growth in 2024, according to data from the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). And many of these institutions are setting records, continuing the post-pandemic rebound seen in 2023.
Calvin University welcomed its largest incoming student group in a decade, with the number of first-year students up slightly over the previous fall. Asbury University had more than 2,000 students—the largest total enrollment in the university’s 134-year history. And Colorado Christian University, which surpassed 10,500 students, was named one of the fastest-growing universities in the country for the ninth year in a row.
At the same time, other Christian colleges are grappling with enrollment declines and budget shortfalls. Some, including Eastern Nazarene and The King’s College, have shut down. Others, including Cornerstone, Concordia, and Seattle Pacific University, have made difficult cuts.
Naturally, the question everyone has when reading such reports is: why? Why are some institutions doing so well right now while others are shrinking or even shuttering? And more, indeed, I’m sure will close this year (and I would exhort them to do so compassionately).
A key statistic to keep in mind as part of the discussion is this:
Overall college enrollment has declined by about 2.5 million students since 2010, a drop of nearly 15 percent in undergraduate enrollment. The number of college students in the US peaked in 2010 and has been on a downward trajectory since then. Religious schools have fared the best, though.
In other words, we’re in an economy of scarcity, as far as the number of students goes. The decline since 2010 is alarming, because the demographic cliff is only hitting now—since ca. 2008, the number of babies born each year in the US has declined. This means that starting 2026 or so, the potential pool of entering freshmen will be even smaller and declining further each subsequent year for a while. So if there is such a decline in the number of college students already, it will only get worse. As this CT article shows, 1 in 5 have been the winners in the great race, at least for this year. Yet every year there is a new applications cycle, and the competition starts all over again.
It’s an uncomfortable thought, but we may as well be honest about it: It is no secret that schools are in competition with each other for every single student. Everyone knows it—as part of its regular strategic planning efforts, every institution identifies and regularly updates its list of “peers” and “aspirant peers.” And every institution nowadays can track the data: to what other colleges/universities are its prospective students applying? And those who turn down admission, where do they go? Questionnaires also make it possible to gather data: precisely why did students turn down admission to go somewhere else?
This brings us back to the question at hand: Why did 1 in 5 evangelical colleges and universities grow their enrollment this academic year—and fairly significantly, in some cases—while others have continued to shrink? Back in September, Clark G. Gilbert and Shirley Hoogstra offered an answer to this very question in their article for Deseret News, looking not only at evangelical colleges but also Catholic and Mormon institutions. In a nutshell, they suggest, it’s all about mission.
Not only does a clearly articulated faith-based mission give a school a clear direction, but it also gives students a sense of belonging and community that is harder to achieve at other institutions. In other words, the same components that attract students to these institutions also make for higher completion rates. Furthermore, multiple institutions on the list of those that are doing well right now have a robust general education program that prioritizes the humanities and theological education. Why? Because in a climate where so many elite students don’t read books, offering an education that is unapologetically and beautifully premodern in its emphases will yet again set a college apart.
These are all very important reminders to any institutions that are thinking about building new dorms or gyms or dining halls right about now, with the hope of such swankier digs attracting new students (yes, I know multiple schools who have done this over the past two decades. No, it didn’t work for a single one of them, as far as I know). True, eighteen-year-olds can be swayed with ritz and glamor. Still, enrollment numbers keep showing that the better bet is to invest in the college’s actual mission—both intellectual and spiritual.
This is a fascinating discussion. Where Christian colleges and universities are in their enrollments is very complicated. This article raises one important factor — the intellectual and spiritual aspect of their respective missions. But we must be careful not to over state this. There are a lot of school with a clear intellectual and spiritual mission but are still struggling with enrollment. Moreover, my guess is that many of “1 in 5” that have increased enrollment have spent much money in the past decade on dorms, sports facilities, dining halls, etc. Finally, it is hard to generalize about the causal factors in enrollment increases when we are talking about a one or two year change. In short, while we can and should not downplay the spiritual and intellectual mission of “successful” schools, the causal factors leading to enrollment success are very complicated and often hard to discern.
Randy Basinger, provost and professor of philosophy emeritus, Messiah University