American Protestant Higher Education Continues to Grow!

Rumors of Christian higher education’s (CHE’s) demise have been greatly exaggerated. In fact, unlike the broader state and secular private sectors, American CHE continues to grow. The 2024 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System’s enrollment data is out, and the data provides good news for Protestant colleges.

Catholic and Protestant Christian higher education enrollment, as I define it in a book co-authored with Ted Cockle and Jess Martin, Christian Higher Education: An Empirical Guide, grew 1.6% between Fall 2023 and Fall 2024. Moreover, enrollment at Protestant institutions alone expanded by 2.4% overall that year. The news gets better for Protestant institutions the farther back one goes. Protestant institutions grew by 3.6% over the past five years and by 10.9% over the past ten. Given these robust numbers, it is time for Protestants to stop the doomsaying once and for all. 

The good news stands out more conspicuously in comparison to other sectors of higher education. State university enrollment is now projected to have declined 3.9% during the past decade, and private enrollment is projected to have declined a whopping 7.1% (the final stats have not yet been calculated for 2024). Protestant higher education is actually bucking the downward trend among secular institutions! 

Certainly, there are important differences among different CHE sectors. Here is the breakdown: 

Sector	Total % +/- 2023-2024	Total % +/- 2019-2024	Total % +/- 2014-2024
CCCU (overlap w IACU)	2.4%	-0.7%	3.4%
HBCUs (minus Xavier, LA)	1.5%	-9.0%	-14.1%
IACE (overlap w CCCU)	-0.9%	6.5%	17.1%
Mainline Protestant	2.6%	0.9%	-5.5%
Other Protestant	4.4%	9.8%	37.1%
TOTAL PROTESTANT	2.4%	3.6%	10.9%
CATHOLIC	0.4%	1.6%	-6.7%

The years of steady enrollment growth may be over next year due to the coming demographic decline among college students. The number of college-eligible students is going to shrink for the foreseeable future. If current trends hold, this decline is likely going to hit Catholic, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), and Mainline Protestant¹ institutions the hardest. Those three sectors have already seen significant enrollment declines over the past decade. 

Catholic collegiate leaders, especially, should recognize that the recent huge declines in mass attendance will likely influence Catholic college enrollment. The few major enrollment growth bright spots for Catholic higher education over the past ten years have been the University of St. Thomas, MN (245% growth), Merrimack College, MA (76%), La Roche University, PA (52%), and Thomas Aquinas College, CA (50%). Additionally, some Catholic institutions, such as Boston College, the University of Notre Dame, and Villanova, have experienced substantial growth in selectivity. 

Unfortunately, HBCUs also continue to suffer both in their enrollment numbers and the low commitment they give to the operationalization of any Christian identity (see Chapter 3 in Christian Higher Education: An Empirical Guide). One bright spot to follow is Simmons College of Kentucky. They are one of the few HBCUs that have operationalized their Christian identity at a high level, and they have grown 94% over the past decade. 

Like HBCUs, Mainline Protestant Universities (MPs) also give little attention to the operationalization of their Christian mission. Thus, MLPs will continue to decline (I’ve written about the dismal state of MLP higher education here). The only two institutional bright spots in the MLP sector, in terms of enrollment growth, are Eastern University, PA (132% growth over the past ten years) and McMurray University, TX (215% growth over a decade). In particular, McMurray has done so by strengthening its institutional commitment to its Christian mission (Eastern’s was already high).

The Protestant Growth Sectors

In the past year, the International Association of Christian Education’s (IACE) members were the only group to see a small decline of 0.9%, but that must take into account the fact that IACE institutions have had the second-highest overall growth of 6.5% over the past five years and 17.1% over the last decade. The other notable growth area was Other Protestant (OP) institutions, such as Grand Canyon University and the University of the Cumberlands (KY), not affiliated with the CCCU or IACE. They grew almost ten percent over the past five years and a whopping 37% over the past ten. 

It should be noted that the significant growth within IACE and OP is driven heavily by the online expansion of both Grand Canyon (an OP institution) and Liberty University (an IACE member) over the past ten years. Still, if one takes those two institutions out of those sectors, both sectors still demonstrate growth of 9.7% and 8.8% over the past decade

Despite the headline-grabbing closures that attract purveyors of bad news, the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), as a sector, has maintained slow but steady growth over the past decade (+3.2%). This growth has been led by Toccoa Falls College, GA (233% over the past decade), Campbellsville University, KY (216%), Southeastern University, FL (200%), and Columbia International University, SC (164%).  

Furthermore, it should be recognized that some of the reasons for the closure of CCCU schools, such as Trinity International (IL) and Trinity Christian (IL), have to do with the secularization and depopulation of the Chicago area and the market saturation in that market. For example, Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States, boasts only one major Protestant (Houston Christian University) and Catholic (University of St. Thomas) university. In contrast, the Chicago area still has close to a half dozen of each (including the largest Catholic University in the U.S., DePaul University). It is not surprising that all the growing CCCU universities mentioned above are in the South and that the demographic decline is not predicted to hit the South (in fact, college-eligible high schoolers are projected to grow by 3% in the South over the next 15 years). 

The negative reporting and scare-mongering about college closures is a case study in how not to do redemptive journalism. When Christians or Christian publications only pay attention to closures, they fail to investigate interesting success stories or steady growth amidst significant headwinds. For example, during my visit to Southeastern University recently, I was impressed by the creative growth model they were using that seeks to bring the university to the church. We need more of this type of creative thinking. 

Granted, with the future demographic decline of college-aged students in the coming decades, there will continue to be a general enrollment decline and various closures. That does not mean the sky is falling! It does mean the market is shrinking. For the past decade, however, Protestant universities, especially those where Christian commitment plays a major role in operational identity, have outperformed their secular public and private peers in the competitive American market. 

Editor’s Note: This post first appeared on The Gospel Coalition website.

1. Mainline Protestant denominations consist of the following denominations: American Baptist Churches, Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Church of the Brethren, Congregationalist, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), Moravian Church in North America, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America, Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), United Church of Christ, and the United Methodist Church. See James David Hudnut-Beumler, and Mark Silk, editors. The Future of Mainline Protestantism in America (Columbia University Press, 2018).