A higher grounding

SAN DIEGO — A procession of good-looking, suntanned young men in wet suits, surfboards in hand, heads to and from the beach all day long.

They’ve got names like Jeremiah and Ben, and most are on the surfing team of Point Loma Nazarene University. Their home base is the beige dorm perched on a cliff on the western edge of the oceanside campus.

Call them surfers for Jesus.

Not many years ago, Christian colleges like Point Loma had a reputation for being little more than glorified Bible schools, essentially dull training grounds for future missionaries and pastors.

They were places where guys’ hair was kept short and girls’ skirts stayed long. Smoking, drinking, dancing and just about any kind of high jinks earned a quick detention or a trip back home to Mom and Dad.

Today, Christian colleges are outfitted with gleaming glass buildings, modern science departments and, often, a more worldly joie de vivre.

The surfers of Point Loma embody a secret in U.S. college admissions: the growth industry in evangelical Protestant and conservative Catholic schools.

“If people are going to spend money sending their kids to a college, they want one with a mission,” says Shirley Mullen, provost at Westmont College, a high-end evangelical school in Santa Barbara, Calif.

“Education is not value-free,” she says. “Parents are a lot more involved in where their kids go to college these days. They want something wholesome, with role models.”

And tradition-oriented Christian colleges and universities are quietly booming. Catholics increasingly reject the liberalism of their faith’s powerhouse schools. Many of America’s estimated 50 million evangelical Christians find secular schools fail to nurture a purpose-driven existence in their children.

Thus, enrollment for the 104 evangelical schools affiliated with the Washington-based Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU) shot up 47 percent during the 1990s, dwarfing the growth rate of private and public colleges and universities, which grew 17 percent and 4 percent, respectively.

Such growth reflects an enrollment surge being enjoyed by colleges of all sorts as baby boomers’ children mature. High school graduations, at 2.5 million in 1996, will soar to 3.2 million in 2008 and then slowly drop off, according to the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education. But by that time, administrators of conservative Christian colleges hope to come out on top in drawing larger numbers of students.

The Washington Times visited Point Loma, Westmont and eight other thriving Christian campuses to find out why they are faring better proportionately than their secular counterparts.

Story Continues →