by Sandy » Sun Nov 06, 2011 5:42 pm
With the costs of a college education skyrocketing well beyond the rate of inflation and price increases in the "real" world, and smaller, private, Christian colleges and universities walking a fine line when it comes to keeping their doors open, it seems that those which are related to denominations would want to keep their Christian emphasis compatible with their core constituency, which is where their bread is buttered, so to speak. And it seems that what is happening is that schools related to Southern Baptist state conventions which have drifted to the theological left are struggling to maintain enrollments and funding sources, while those which have a conservative reputation and have remained so are finding support and gathering new students from places that used to be in the geographic domain of some of the other schools.
There must still be a fairly steady stream of students coming from Southern Baptist churches to cause some schools to move toward attracting them. Liberty has allowed itself to be designated as "Southern Baptist-related," and may even have some kind of financial support coming from the SBCV. Statistically, it is the number one choice of students who self-identify as "Southern Baptist" from Virginia, North Carolina and the Mid-Atlantic. Cedarville University in Ohio recently entered into a "fraternal relationship" with the State Convention of Baptists in Ohio, and Southern Baptists are now the single largest constituency on their campus, formerly under the trusteeship of the GARBC. The Texas Baptist schools which have identified openly as conservative are seeing the percentage of Baptist students on their campus increase, and their overall enrollment swell.
Georgia Baptists have seen at least one of their smaller, four year schools shut down. Perhaps this is a way to help ensure that the others will be around for a while.