Religious Colleges That Lean Into Their Identity Make Gains

Franciscan University of Steubenville just opened a new, 111,000-square-foot academic building and is in the process of expanding its Christ the King Chapel by 175 seats.

The Catholic institution in Ohio needs more space after enrollment rose 6 percent this year to 3,972 students, from 3,750 last year. Over the last decade, enrollment has grown a whopping 46 percent.

Timothy Reardon, vice president for enrollment management at Franciscan, attributes the university’s growth to its intensive, “dynamically orthodox” approach to Catholic education and identity. The university’s student body is about 97 percent Catholic. Four Masses are said every weekday—five on weekends—and are typically “standing room only,” he said. Daily lines to go to confession at the campus chapel snake out the door and around the street corner. The president’s executive team and the theology and philosophy professors all take an oath of fidelity to the Magisterium, a pledge to uphold Catholic Church teachings.

The university is among those recognized by the Cardinal Newman Society, known for “vigorously vetting Catholic colleges, ensuring they have strong policies and standards that uphold Catholic identity,” according to its website. The organization produces the annual Newman Guide to steer Catholic students and parents toward “institutions that refuse to compromise their Catholic mission.” The colleges included in the Newman Guide embrace Ex corde Ecclesiae, a 1990 directive from Pope John Paul II outlining his vision for Catholic education. The application to become a Newman Guide institution asks whether speakers who publicly defy Catholic teachings are allowed on campus and whether more than 80 percent of faculty and board members are Catholic, among other questions.

“We’re reaching that truly Catholic audience and offering them a truly Catholic education,” Reardon said.

Franciscan isn’t alone in its ascent. Leaders of religiously affiliated colleges say enrollment at small, relatively strict faith-based institutions is booming. The Cardinal Newman Society put out a news release recently that said, in general, their colleges reported “enormous enrollment growth.” Benedictine College in Kansas, for example, hit a record 2,256 undergraduates, and Christendom College in Virginia reached a new high of 554 students, growing 40 percent in the last decade. Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina saw an influx of about 577 incoming students, reaching 1,532 undergraduates over all. The university recently built two new residence halls to house about 360 students in response to the growth.

The news release described the upward enrollment trend as “great news for Catholics,” noting that “most Catholic colleges continue their tragic secularization” and some have closed down.

Why They’re Growing

Donna Carroll, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said she isn’t surprised by the trend, given “the fractured, complicated culture in which we live.”

Some Catholic students want to be “in the thick of” dialogue on hot-button topics and choose institutions with a wide ideological spectrum, she said, while “others are looking for places where they can find a kinship and a homogeneous experience of belief and belonging and a strong single clarity of faith.” She believes Cardinal Newman institutions tend to offer “ideological safety,” which she views as a “positive” option for the students who want it.

“One of the beauties of Catholic higher education is that there is choice,” she added.

She noted, however, that Cardinal Newman institutions aren’t the only members of her association that are growing. Her organization doesn’t have current data for all of its 185 degree-granting U.S. institutions, but she’s seen wide variability in enrollment reports out of Catholic universities this fall. Some are suffering enrollment declines—particularly those in the Northeast that are competing with one another as they hit the demographic cliff. But others, particularly Hispanic-serving institutions and those located in states with growing populations such as Texas, are rapidly expanding.

“It depends on focus, it depends on location, it depends on reputation, like the larger [higher ed] sector in general,” Carroll said.

Bill Thierfelder, president of Belmont Abbey College, noted that there’s diversity among Newman Guide institutions as well, so they might not all be growing for the same reasons. For instance, his institution, located in North Carolina’s swath of the Bible Belt, has a student body that’s roughly half non-Catholic. He believes those students are attracted to the college because they find the values-based approach to teaching and even athletics “inspiring,” and they like the welcoming ethos on campus.

“Benedictines are known for welcoming everyone … like, come on in, no matter who you are, what’s your faith, what’s your background, we love you,” Thierfelder said.

Provost Joseph Wysocki said the university has also enjoyed an enrollment boost from the “explosion” of the “classical education movement,” a push among K-12 schools to return to traditional liberal arts education, generally with a focus on Western and Christian literary works. For example, Great Hearts Academies, charter schools that “give particular emphasis to the literary and philosophical classics of the West,” have ballooned to serve roughly 30,000 students in Arizona, Louisiana and Texas.

Belmont Abbey has been “very deliberate in responding to that movement and recruiting to those schools,” Wysocki said. The college also buys student lists from the Classic Learning Test, a controversial standardized testing alternative to the SAT and ACT, to advertise to prospective students.

“We have really kind of tapped into that growing movement that we think is very important for restoring an education that is understood primarily as soul craft,” Wysocki said.

A Broader Trend

David Hoag, president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, has noticed similar trends among Christian institutions more broadly.

While some of the council’s members have seen their enrollments mirror local downward population trends for traditional college-age residents, he’s also found that “schools that are really doubling down on their Christian mission are doing well.”

Enrollment at Asbury University in Kentucky, for example, has continued to rise after the university went viral for a spontaneous, two-week-long prayer session last year, dubbed the “Asbury revival” or outpouring. The university, which is associated with the Wesleyan theological tradition, enrolled 2,086 students this fall, the largest student population in the university’s history.

Palm Beach Atlantic University in Florida, which has grown “more bold” in advertising its Christian identity, according to Hoag, saw applications skyrocket over a period of four years. The university reported a 305.5 percent increase in applications between 2019 and 2023, and record-breaking incoming classes three years in a row; 4,147 students enrolled this fall. As a result, Palm Beach Atlantic proposed building a 25-story dormitory this past summer.

That’s a more permanent solution than the one adopted by Warner University, a Christian institution in Florida where Hoag previously served as president, which had to board students at Legoland, a nearby amusement park and resort, his last two years because of enrollment growth, he said.

“Families are looking for places that are safe, that are true to kind of the Christian mission and Christ-centered,” he said. These institutions are “leading with their Christian mission and their values and who they are. And I think it’s making a difference.”

He also doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that Christian institutions that lean into their religious identity are making gains at a time when higher ed over all has been “under the microscope.”

He noted that Americans were already having a national conversation about colleges’ value and affordability when some university presidents were called before Congress last December to testify about their handling of campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war. News of protests unsettled families, he said.

“Because it’s going to cost so much, they don’t want their students at places that are going to be possibly dangerous because there’s riots or unsettledness on their campus,” Hoag said. “They want civility. They want nurturing.”