To Stay Competitive, Small Christian Colleges Emphasize Specific Niches

At Indiana Wesleyan University, incoming freshmen without a chosen major are not left in academic limbo. The Christian liberal-arts college has a special title for them — the “pre-declared major,” which has become the most popular choice.

It’s typical at many colleges for undeclared students to complete general-education courses while deciding on a major, maybe with an adviser’s help. But Indiana Wesleyan takes a more active role. The university guides students on what it calls a career-driven search with spiritual elements: They are enrolled in a “Life Calling” course, offered vocational workshops and personality tests, and paired with an academic adviser and with a life coach from the Center for Life Calling, a career-development program.

“We don’t want to prepare [students] just for a job, but for a lifetime of significance,” said David Wright, the president. “We want to help them find a way to intersect with the world’s needs.”

The concept is spiritual, he said. Indeed, most Christian colleges wear their religious affiliations on their sleeves.

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But higher education is facing an overall decline in undergraduate enrollment, and fewer young people are identifying as religious. That double whammy could spell financial trouble for small Christian institutions, which may seem to offer a homogenous religious-education experience for their students.

That has prompted faith-based colleges to look for ways to set themselves apart from one another while staying true to their religious missions. Some offer personalized study abroad and academic programs, while others expand online courses for nontraditional students. Administrators travel to local congregations, tap into alumni networks, and develop relationships abroad to attract international students.

“These are challenging times, but I think there is no silver bullet to the enrollment challenges that we as Christian colleges face,” Wright said. “It’s really doing the hard work of knowing the value you offer that students are interested in and how you can make yourself accessible to them.”

Online Chaplains

Indiana Wesleyan, affiliated with the Wesleyan Church, has roughly 3,000 students on its campus and an online enrollment that is four times as great, with adult-learning centers in Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Atlanta.

“People think that online is cold, sterile, and not personable, but it’s not,” Wright said. “We have online chaplains, and we built into our learning platform online chapels, so [students] can interact [with chaplains].”

The university is successful in attracting students from different backgrounds, Wright said, since, like some other Christian colleges, it does not require them to submit a statement of faith. But religious principles and ethics are still emphasized in the classroom.

Warner University, in Florida, has also embraced an online program. It is a means of attracting international students who might eventually enroll on campus, said David Hoag, president of the college, in Lake Wales.

Warner offers partial-tuition scholarships for high-school students in other countries to take online courses, and Hoag has visited popular Christian churches in South Korea to promote the opportunity.

“We didn’t want a couple thousand of dollars in plane tickets to stop [an international student] from attending a Christian university in the U.S.,” he said. “We now have a few students come all the way from Korea to study here, and they’re thriving.”

A number of small Christian colleges, like Warner, compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, which allows them to grant scholarships to athletes. A robust athletics program attracts students who might have gone to an NCAA Division III college that does not offer scholarships or enroll many international students, Hoag said.

“Athletics gives [students] another identity group, or a system of support as they go through college,” he said.

In addition to traditional sports like football and basketball, Christian colleges have begun esports programs and offer scholarships to varsity players. In Missouri alone, Missouri Baptist University; Southwest Baptist University, and Columbia College are all Christian-affiliated institutions that started recruiting gamers in 2016.

Educational Mission

Most students are drawn to academic programs that will lead to employment, including those with study-abroad opportunities, said Gayle Beebe, president of Westmont College, in California.

“This is a generation that is going to have a long working life,” he said. "[Data show that] they’re going to have one major assignment outside the U.S. So what can we do as a college to prepare them for the life they’ll face?”

Nearly three-fourths of Westmont’s undergraduates participate in overseas or off-campus programs, Beebe said. The college offers a personalized study-abroad program, in which students travel with faculty members who help them interpret the experience. They also take related courses before and after their trip, Beebe said.

Some colleges focus on job opportunities in their own regions, starting professional programs related to local business needs. At John Brown University, in Arkansas, a nursing program has grown in response to increased local health-care needs since the expansion of Walmart’s headquarters in the state. Local hospitals have looked to hire or sponsor qualified nursing students from the program, said Charles Pollard, the president.

Most small Christian colleges cater to regional or in-state students and have just one or two collegiate competitors, said Calvin Troup, president of Geneva College, in Pennsylvania.

Geneva is a liberal-arts institution, but its most popular majors are business and engineering. There is a need for skilled engineers in the state, Troup said.

“We count on specific programs that are important to what students are looking for today,” he said, adding that the college focuses on “mission and identity” to sell its programs.

And while religious mission is central to Geneva’s goal, Troup acknowledged that it’s a difficult time to compete against large research universities. The college has faced enrollment declines over the past decade and has reduced the size of its faculty by about 20 percent, he said.

When evaluating the progress of Indiana Wesleyan, Wright said he is one of the few presidents willing to describe their college as a business.

“Our sector doesn’t like to use the word ‘business’ very much, but I find this language useful,” he said. Wright describes religious education as a market with “very little differentiation of product” — the most successful colleges are those that excel in branding specific academic programs or extracurriculars.

“My challenge to our organization is that we are defined by our identity and mission as a Christ-centered academic community,” Wright said. “But then you have to go further and you have to ask yourself, How do I ensure that the people who might be interested in that see a value they’re willing to pay for?”

Correction (2/16/2019, 1:05 p.m.): Walmart expanded its headquarters in Arkansas; it did not move there. The text has been updated accordingly.

Follow Terry Nguyen on Twitter at @terrygtnguyen, or email her at terry.nguyen@chronicle.com.