Enrollment Booming at Christian Colleges

Many Christian college administrators have been happily scrambling for more space in the 1995-96 school year because of record-breaking enrollments.

A recent survey conducted by the Washington, D.C.-based Coalition of Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), an association of accredited private four-year Christian colleges and universities, shows 53 percent of its 90 member schools reporting record head counts last fall. New first-year student enrollment records were set by 38 percent of the reporting colleges.

The larger pool of college-age students, wariness of secular schools, more innovative programs, and marketing savvy all have played a role in the boom. In the 64 CCCU schools responding to surveys, 1995-96 enrollment totaled 94,114, a 5 percent rise from the 89,693 at those colleges a year earlier.

“We’re converting what were closets into offices for faculty,” says James W. Didier, president of Judson College in Elgin, Illinois. In the past two years, the American Baptist institution has experienced a 50 percent increase in enrollment, from 602 to 900 students. The college recently purchased a former hotel for $1.3 million that will be converted for student housing and classroom use.

Other Christian colleges are welcoming the formidable increase in enrollment as they refill rooms unused since the drought of new students in the early 1980s. Even with this year’s 50 percent increase in its new first-year students and 13 percent increase in overall enrollment, Nashville’s Trevecca Nazarene College is still smaller than it was in 1983.

While the increases in enrollment are not unique to Christian colleges–which account for only 1 percent of enrollment in American institutions of higher education–the gains are greater than those in either public or other private institutions.

The American Council on Education reported that 69 percent of private colleges reported an increase in total enrollment this school year. However, only 41 percent of four-year public colleges reported an increase, while 49 percent reported a decrease. Statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics project overall undergraduate enrollment to increase by 7 percent in the next decade. One overriding reason is a tight employment market and belief that better-paying jobs result from a college education.

COOPERATION, NOT COMPETITION: Personnel at Christian colleges are working together to attract students and to gain legitimacy much as car dealers do in an auto mall. In such a setting, groups with a similar product cooperate to attract consumers to the market, rather than using resources to compete, according to Jeff Berggren, executive director of admissions and financial aid at Indiana’s Huntington College. The school had a 51 percent increase in first-year students in 1995-96 and a record-breaking 14 percent increase in total enrollment.

Cccu president Robert C. Andringa agrees with the assessment. “Colleges are beginning to learn that their competition is not other Christian colleges,” he says, noting that the big rivals are community and state colleges. James Grant, president of Simpson College in Redding, California, sees the enrollment increases as largely a demographic issue. “There are a lot of bodies available,” he says. “The baby boomers’ children are hitting college age.” When Grant assumed the presidency in 1993, the college had fewer than 200 beds. He expects 650 new first-year students this year.

The swell of high-school graduates has been long awaited by admissions directors, who struggled through periodic enrollment dips the past two decades. The scarcity of potential students had its benefits, however, Grant says.

“The schools at the bottom of the [CCCU] died, and those that survived had to concentrate on retention issues,” he says. To keep students, those colleges strengthened their academic base and improved their facilities.

Jan Forman, director of admissions at Trevecca Nazarene, attributes the college’s unexpected 50 percent increase in first-year students in large part to giving personal attention in the recruiting process. “We really have given a lot of time to phone calls, to home visits, visiting churches, and visiting schools.”

SPIRITUALITY IS IN: Christian schools such as Huntington have started to emphasize their religious nature. Some colleges have directed their marketing personnel to target a local, rather than a national, market, while others have emphasized special programs, such as youth ministry.

A rising negative perception of secular and public colleges also has contributed to the enrollment surge.

“People are very concerned about the issue of values,” says Nathan Hatch, newly named provost of the University of Notre Dame. The rise of multiculturalism and the homosexual rights movement in university settings makes many conservative Christians uncomfortable with secular schools, Hatch says, because they perceive that basic virtues are under siege.

“In a fraying society, people closely align themselves with like-minded people,” Hatch says.

Andringa agrees: “In the public’s eye, there is now more of a distinction between public and private Christian colleges.” Thirty years ago Michigan State University professors encouraged him in his new Christian faith, Andringa says, but now, more often than not, students who submit papers at secular schools with distinctly Christian reasoning may be denigrated.

Focus on the Family president James Dobson questioned the wisdom of public education in a 1993 mailing, in which he highlighted cases of moral relativism in public universities and encouraged parents to send children to Christian colleges.

“I’ve had a number of admissions directors tell me it was the single biggest help in recent years,” Andringa says.

GROWTH HAS ITS LIMITS: Not every Christian college has added students, and for some it is a planned decision. “The costs of expanding are tremendous right now,” Andringa says.

Other schools face community pressures. Westmont College in Santa Barbara, California, received a record number of applications last fall, but county regulations have limited on-campus enrollment because of neighbors’ complaints.

Nonetheless, most coalition-member schools see increasing enrollment as beneficial.

Some are working to be included in Money magazine’s annual listing of best buys in higher education. Money does not list schools that stress religious ideology in classrooms or require chapel attendance. The magazine has published a list of best buys in religious schools; however, Andringa says the schools were simply church-related rather than “Christian.” Andringa and some college administrators have had unproductive talks with editors at Money to try to persuade them to change their policy. “Some colleges have said it’s almost better to say they’re excluded,” Andringa says. “It almost gives them a better story to tell.”

CAN IT LAST? Many admissions officers are confident the increases will continue well into the next millennium.

Through developing degree completion programs for off-campus, working adults who want to finish their bachelor’s degrees, several Christian colleges boost enrollment numbers, save on space, and raise money.

“I don’t see this enrollment trend stopping,” says Rick Newberry, director of admissions at Cornerstone College. The 870-student Grand Rapids, Michigan, school jumped 19 percent in total enrollment this year, with a 44 percent increase in new first-year students.

Other administrators are more cautious, warning of another demographic downturn in available bodies in 2007.

The throng crowding dormitories and the hope of more students have led to growing pains. Building projects drain financial resources as the rate of giving rises slower than the rate of enrollment.

“The first problem is always space,” says Andringa, noting that several schools purchased houses near campus or have rented hotel rooms to accommodate students. One school even put up students in a mobile-home park.

Administrators such as Berggren, however, are not wringing their hands.

“You want to have that problem,” he says. “Given the alternative, you definitely want it.”