Online, Christian Students

by Steve Kolowich
June 14, 2010

The question facing universities looking to compete in the booming market for online higher education is not so much how to do it, but how to distinguish themselves from the rest.

In this, Christian universities appear to have a built-in advantage. And many are seizing the opportunity to expand their footprint.

“Given the relatively strong religious character of much of the U.S. population, and an ever more crowded online market, the schools that are faith-based in some strong sense” have an advantage over others, the majority of whom have built “more generic programs that don’t have any strong affiliation with a demographic group or belief system,” says Richard Garrett, an online learning analyst for the consulting group Eduventures.

Investing heavily in online has already allowed some institutions to enroll many more students than they ever could have hoped to at a physical campus. Grand Canyon University, which enrolled about 3,500 students at its peak as a traditional university in the mid-1990s, was forced to reinvent itself as a for-profit online university earlier this decade after coming close to financial ruin. Now it serves 36,000 students, about 90 percent of whom are distance learners. the rest
image by Arbron

The combination of America’s religious character, its large and well-organized evangelical population, its sophisticated online education market, and the big-tent approach to Christian education taken by many of its faith-based universities has set the stage for rapid expansion of Christian-oriented distance learning...