B ooming enrollments at evangelical Christian colleges have created one of the sunniest spots in American higher education, recently drawing the attention of the Chronicle of Higher Education , the nation's premier educational newsweekly. The rapid growth at Christian schools comes at a time when higher education on the whole is preoccupied with bruising battles over ideology and the personal tragedies of wayward students. Accounts of student suicide, binge drinking, drug-connected homicide, rape, and assault are all too familiar headlines each fall as 12 million students at colleges and universities embark on a new school year. By contrast, evangelical colleges, from an outsider's point of view, seem to be a nostalgic eddy in the mainstream current of American higher education. But undergraduate enrollments at the 94 CCCU schools have grown 24 percent from 1990 to 1996, more than four times greater than enrollment growth at private institutions.
Most Christian colleges do provide an environment conducive to Christian virtues and values.
But a recent study by the CCCU indicates the Chronicle chose to focus on the wrong angle. What is most important to most students attending Christian colleges are valuable course content and excellent instruction in their majors and knowledgeable faculty. Indeed, what they are most satisfied with in their Christian college experience is quality academics, not a safe harbor from a big, bad world. Members of the baby boom generation that rebelled in the 1960s and '70s against in loco parentis , the idea that schools act on behalf of parents, today are tenured professors and university presidents. In the meantime, campus life has devolved to the point of being life-threatening, even to blameless bystanders.