The Sky Is Not Falling, Revisited: Religious Private Institutional Enrollment is Stronger than State and Secular Private

Since I still see people panic about Christian higher education every time the news emerges that a Christian college or university with less than 700 students closes, I thought it would be helpful to look at the bulk enrollment numbers again using the most recent 2021 total enrollment figures from the Digest of Education Statistics.

Everyone should know from online articles about college-aged student demographics that enrollment will continue shrinking from the 21,019,438 enrollment numbers of 2010 for the foreseeable future. In fact, total higher education enrollment has decreased by 11.2% between 2010 and 2021.

Yet, when comparing different higher education sectors,  an important finding emerges that the Christian press and attention-seeking bloggers and tweeters neglect to report. This table shows the percentages of decline in enrollment for various sectors between 2010 and 2021:

You would not know private religious institutions are declining the least among higher education sectors by all the handwringing about the decline of Christian higher education that one sees online. The problem with most of this analysis is that it fails to compare the religious sector to other sectors. I should note that the “Religious Private” category includes a wide range of institutional types and religious groups. My analysis of the 2022 enrollment figures for only Christian colleges and universities can be found in this post. The 2023 enrollment figures come out in a few months, and I will once again disaggregate the 2023 enrollment figures for specifically Christian colleges and universities when they do.

The denominations (or non-denominations) that increased their enrollment the most between 2010 and 2021 are shown in the following table:

As can be seen, the most recent growth of Christian higher education has been among the Assemblies of God and inter- or nondenominational institutions.

With only a few exceptions, the denominational institutions that decreased the most between 2010 and 2021 were mostly Mainline Protestant institutions (See Table below).

The three exceptions all have “Free” in their name and their declines can be explained by various factors. For example, an Evangelical Free institution recently closed mainly because it had not established an endowment (apparently for theological reasons).

One might wonder: What are the differences in total enrollment between 2020 and 2021? Was there a more recent post-COVID slide among private religious institutions? The recent data does not reveal anything major. For this past year, secular private institutions stopped their major enrollment slide, and–while religious private enrollment did see a decline, it declined less than public institutions:

Thus, I suggest the major danger facing religious higher education has less to do with their enrollment numbers and more with their unsustainable habit of increasing tuition discounting. One recent study of 341 private institutions reported that the 2022-23 discount rates were “the highest ever recorded.”  If your enrollment is below 1000 students and your tuition discounting is above the “56.2% average institutional tuition discount rate for first-year students,” you need to think about your approach and sustainability. The reality is that economies of scale, what I call the Walmartization of higher education, reward larger institutions unless a smaller institution has the endowment or demand to offer a boutique Christian liberal arts education.

Thus, we should not be surprised when some of these institutions close. These closures are a tragedy for the students, the employees, and the local communities in which these institutions exist. Yet, we should not use these isolated closures as an excuse to ignore the bigger picture and story regarding enrollment in religious institutions. Let’s please stop the “sky is falling” rhetoric.

Editor’s Note: The Christ Animating Learning Blog will take a two-week break from July 18th to July 31st. Of course, please continue to send your blog posts for August. Thanks!