Christian colleges have a slow, quiet way of losing their faith. It rarely happens in one vote. It happens as schools chase enrollment, rankings and cultural approval, and the Christian part becomes something mentioned in the brochure rather than lived on campus. I’ve watched it happen as a university administrator, a board member, an alumnus and a parent of three kids who attended Christian universities. My own alma mater has since closed.
So for my doctoral research I asked a simple question: the Christian universities that are still attracting students with real, lived faith, what do they have in common? I interviewed the presidents, provosts and vice presidents who run five of them. Here is what they told me, without the academic scaffolding.
The short answer
Two things did most of the work: integrity and faculty.
Integrity means the school actually is what it says it is. None of these universities relied on clever marketing to win committed Christian students. They won them because the faith in their mission statement showed up in the classroom, in student life and in who they hired. One leader put the whole study into a single question: “Now that you lead the place, does the reality match the brochure?” Students and parents can tell when it doesn’t.
Faculty turned out to be the single most important factor. Over and over, leaders said the lived faith of their professors did more to attract and keep students than anything the admissions office could print. A school is only as Christian as the people teaching in it.
The four things they all do
Underneath those two ideas, the same four practices showed up at every school.
1. They are clear about who they are, and they don’t blink
Every part of the institution lines up with its Christian mission, from the board of trustees to student life policies to marketing. These schools would rather be clear and lose some applicants than be vague and lose their identity. As one president said, “We want to be crystal clear about who we are and what we’re trying to do so that those who do not want it can say, yeah, I am out… Because those that do want it, then I want to serve them, and I want to serve them with excellence.”
2. They hire for mission, not just credentials
All five schools require their faculty, staff, presidents and board members to be Christians, and they take that seriously. At one, the president is involved in every faculty hire. Another runs a year-long training program to help new faculty bring faith and learning together. It goes well beyond professors. One dean described it this way: “If I want to hire a photographer in my department, my vice president has an hour-long interview with them and goes through the statement of faith and our employee expectations.”
3. They build real spiritual community on purpose
Faith at these schools is both taught and caught. Required Bible courses (two to five at each school), chapel, discipleship groups, mission trips and faculty who invest in students outside of class all work together. One school even hires its own spiritually mature graduates as admissions counselors. As its president explained, “They have a Bible minor; they have listened to five hundred sermons… So that’s who we hire to go tell our story.”
4. They engage the culture instead of hiding from it
These schools hold firmly to historic Christian teaching on the hard issues of the day, and they don’t pretend those issues away. They bring them into the open so students learn to think, disagree charitably and speak with conviction. “We’re going to be bringing in speakers who are going to address these issues head-on,” one president said, “because our students have to be equipped because that is the world they’re entering.” Several have also written their convictions clearly into policy to protect their religious liberty.
Different front doors, same destination
One surprise: the schools disagreed on who they let in. Only one of the five requires every student to profess faith in Christ. The others ask students to commit to a community covenant instead, and they see their campus as both a place of discipleship and a mission field. But all five share the same goal once students arrive: to help them grow into mature, convictional followers of Jesus. I call this “diverse entry, unified journey.” The starting point varies. The destination doesn’t.
Where even the best schools fall short
These universities are doing a lot right, but they share three blind spots:
- They rarely measure what works. Most judge their strategies by anecdote rather than data.
- They seldom ask students and alumni. Almost none had a real system for gathering feedback and putting it to use, and every school scored low here.
- They plan for today more than tomorrow. At every school, planning for the next generation of students was the weakest part of its strategy work, even as cost and doubts about the value of a Christian liberal arts degree keep rising.
How I found these schools
I surveyed 2,532 people who know Christian higher education and asked which schools are doing the best job attracting committed Christian students. Their 72 completed responses named 62 schools. I narrowed that list to 30 U.S. universities with at least 1,000 undergraduates, then chose five in four states, with 1,500 to 4,200 undergraduates each. Four are more than a century old. Between January and March 2024 I held 12 in-depth interviews with their presidents, provosts and vice presidents of enrollment, marketing and student life. The schools are kept anonymous.
It’s a small study, and it reflects what leaders say rather than what students experience. A larger sample, and a comparison with schools that are struggling, would be the natural next step.
Read the full dissertation
If you lead a Christian university, sit on its board or care about the future of Christian higher education, the full study goes deeper into each finding, the biblical foundation behind it and the interview data. It was completed in April 2024 for my Doctor of Ministry at Corban University under the title Sustaining Faith: Adaptive Strategies in Christian Universities Amidst Demographic Changes.
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