Рост числа абитуриентов подтверждает спрос на христианские либеральные искусства в США

MOBILE, Ala. (BP) — Reactions vary when Charles Smith tells prospective students that the University of Mobile (UM) teaches every subject with a Christian worldview — from organic chemistry to marketing. “There’s a third of the room that loves that,” said Smith, UM’s president. Another third doesn’t care. “It’s in one ear and out the other.” A final third of the group “is a little bit nervous about that” and seems to think, “Did you just tell me you all are fundamentalists?” It’s tempting to cater to the two-thirds who are not drawn to a liberal arts university with distinctively Christian commitments. But Smith has resisted that temptation, and it has paid off for UM, where the incoming class was up 15% last year and 30% this year. His experience mirrors a national trend. Though times are tough for liberal arts institutions, schools that live out Christian convictions are finding a market for the education they offer. “The schools that have courage and clarity in their convictions will see growth in the next 10 years,” Smith said of Christian liberal arts colleges, undergraduate institutions that focus on well-rounded education in the humanities, sciences, social sciences and arts rather than training only for specific vocations. ‘Challenging times’ Higher education has fallen on hard times. The number of U.S. students enrolled in educational institutions beyond high school peaked at 29.5 million in 2010-11 before a gradual decline to 25.6 million in 2023-24, according to data compiled by the U.S. government. Meanwhile, public opinion on higher education has turned negative. Americans expressing “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education fell from 57% in 2015 to 36% in 2024, the Gallup organization reported. Baptist colleges and universities are no exception to the downturn. In 2010, America’s Baptist colleges and universities — not all of which are Southern Baptist — had a cumulative enrollment of 174,538, according to government data. By 2021, the number dropped to 128,370. Over the same period, the government’s tally of Baptist colleges dropped from 69 to 57. “I am entering my 43rd year in the work of Christian higher education,” said David Dockery, president of both Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and the International Alliance for Christian Education, an organization that works to strengthen and unify the work of Christian education. “These are the most challenging times for this work that I have seen in more than four decades.” A perfect storm of “multiple challenges” confronts Christian colleges “from a variety of directions,” Dockery said. Those challenges include a declining population of college-age young adults, the questioning of higher education’s value and the increase of religiously unaffiliated individuals who are unlikely to seek Christian education. Beyond that, state governments are competing for students by pumping billions of dollars into their public universities, a funding stream private liberal arts colleges cannot match, Smith said. Well-rounded education also is falling out of fashion in favor of teaching students a specific trade like welding or nursing. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed by Congress last year placed lower limits on federal borrowing for degrees in fields that make less money, which some see as a blow to liberal arts education. In such an environment, is long-term survival possible for the approximately 40 colleges and universities affiliated with state Baptist conventions in the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) family? Yes, says Heath Thomas, president of Oklahoma Baptist University (OBU), because Christian families realize increasingly that Christ-centered education both builds character and launches productive careers in the workforce. “I disagree with the assessment that higher education is on the downhill slope,” Thomas said. The key is “how we do our higher education, and it’s how we perceive the value of a distinctively Christian education.” As he puts it, “Faith-forward education fast forwards careers.” Limiting higher education exclusively to job training “is an unbiblical view of education,” Thomas said. “If you read Proverbs 1, you don’t see anything about the job. But you do learn about the fear of the Lord. That’s the purpose of education, to increase knowledge.” Plus, “most of the people that are graduating with university education today are going to change jobs about eight or nine times,” he said. You “need something greater than just the workforce. You need the wisdom.” At OBU, a Christian liberal arts education entails teaching first-year students a biblical worldview and requiring all students to work through a core curriculum that includes Bible, theology and foundational texts of western civilization. All courses in every field integrate the Christian worldview. Such an approach seems to be bearing fruit. OBU is growing and has a 97% job placement rate among its graduates. A 2025 survey by the Center for Academic Faithfulness and Flourishing found that people interested in Christian higher education rated “Christian character” and “academic excellence” as the two characteristics they most desired in an educational institution. Those characteristics were even more important to survey respondents who attended church frequently. ‘Unleash the laity’ Some Baptist college administrators worry that the rise of undergraduate colleges at five of the six SBC seminaries could throw a monkey wrench in the growth of Baptist liberal arts colleges and universities, funneling away students. But seminary colleges draw only a small slice of Southern Baptist students, Dockery said. Even among those preparing for vocational ministry, many seek undergraduate programs at Baptist liberal arts colleges that “allow students the wonderful educational experience of studying Bible and theology in the context of a larger liberal arts-based curriculum,” Dockery said. Undergraduate programs at the seminaries are “especially beneficial for students called later in life to prepare for ministry or for those students who are sure that vocational ministry is their path, allowing them to pursue five-year programs that grant both undergraduate and graduate degrees within a shorter time span.” But 90% of Baptist college students are not preparing for vocational ministry, Dockery noted. They are prime candidates for Baptist liberal arts institutions. Seminaries, Thomas said, “are designed to train those that are going into full-time Christian ministry.” Baptist liberal arts colleges seek to “unleash the laity.” Back at UM, Smith has found that unleashing the laity with Christian thinking is, ironically, more cutting edge than focusing higher education only on cutting-edge technology. “The pace of change is so fast” that “you can’t possibly train a student to do what is cutting edge in a university setting in 2026,” he said. “What you must do is balance liberal arts with some of the cutting-edge technology. The liberal arts foundation helps them know how to be a human” and “anticipate patterns.” Students equipped with the ability to think as Christians, he said, “are the ones that will be able to evolve and actually lead the innovation.” (EDITOR’S NOTE — David Roach is a writer in Mobile, Ala.)