Liberty no longer the "World's Largest Christian University"

[Sandy]

https://religionnews.com/2018/04/27/lib ... niversity/

Enrollment declines at Liberty University, both on campus and on-line, have led to the school's no longer being proclaimed as the "World's largest Christian university." That title now belongs to Grand Canyon University in Phoenix. GCU, which happens to be my alma mater, has about 5,000 more on-campus students than Liberty, and apparently last spring surpassed them in on-line enrollment as well. GCU started out as an SBC state-convention related school which had achieved the milestone of having more than 1,000 students on campus about two years before I enrolled. The enrollment was 1,300 during my first year there, and it crept up to 1,500 by the time I graduated. Disaster struck in the 90's, with the scandal at the Baptist Foundation of Arizona and the school was on the verge of closing but saved itself by disconnecting from the state convention, declaring a self-perpetuating board of trustees who promptly sold the school to a group made up mostly of alumni and business supporters. The expansion of the on-line programs and the campus itself has been nothing short of remarkable.

Support for and close alignment with Trump by Jerry Falwell Jr. has been attributed to the loss of numbers at LU, particularly on-line registration.

https://cacoethisscribendiblog.wordpres ... ma-maters/

[William Thornton]

Falwell/trump aside, I'm one SBCer that hates to see LU's ads in SBC publications and their booth at the convention.

[Haruo]

Sandy, did you get the attribution inverted? What you wrote sounds like your sources think that Liberty supports Trump because of its falling enrollment, whereas I think it's probably the other way around, the support of Trump is so partisan that it is leading to falling enrollment among those who want a nonpartisan Jesus in their (kids') college leadership.

[Sandy]

[John Sneed]

William,

I am sorry to see that you are so unhappy seeing Liberty around the SBC. I feel the opposite, but then, I am a Liberty alumni (BSc '94). I am excited to see the school in and around the SBC.

[Stephen Fox]

Wednesday Cohen said a poli sci pollster at Liberty Kaysinger I think was the name, did a push poll for Trump campaign and moved him up nine spots from a CNN poll. Keep an eye on Mark Meadows of Truett's WNC congressional district. He may be unraveling, this Southern Baptist transplant from Florida, who settled in Highlands NC and had some mixed race nieces and nephews along the way.