Religious colleges are closing in Mass. Can they innovate to survive?
When Eastern Nazarene College, a private Christian liberal arts college in Quincy, closed its doors in May , it uprooted hundreds of students in their academic careers and cost faculty and staff their jobs, forcing many to leave the state .
Religiously affiliated schools like Eastern Nazarene College have been more likely to face financial dangers. Of the four colleges now listed as being on financially shaky footing in Massachusetts, three are religiously affiliated. About a fifth of the colleges that have closed in the past decade were religiously affiliated — a high proportion in the state.
"It's the movement of society," said Robert Benjamin, former vice president of Multicultural Affairs at Eastern Nazarene College. "As American society becomes less and less religious, the student population or those that are college-aged — those numbers would also decline."
Young adults are far less religious than older adults — in how they identify, whether they pray and whether they attend religious services — according to the most recent study from Pew Research Center of more than 35,000 respondents.
As fewer people go to church and, as a result, churches consolidate, the pipeline bringing high school students to denominationally-affiliated colleges is breaking down.
"The loyalty of going to their denominational school has just declined over the years. Folks are just exercising options that go beyond that particular school," Benjamin said.
For over a decade, Eastern Nazarene College's incoming classes have been in decline. The college had 541 undergraduate and graduate students in Fall 2022 — more than 100 fewer students than the year prior and more than 150 fewer students than in 2020.
Eastern Nazarene College isn't alone. Eight out of 12 religiously affiliated institutions in Massachusetts experienced decreasing full-time enrollment from 2016 to 2023, according to data compiled by Gary Stocker at College Viability, which looks at the financial stability of institutions.
Across the United States, more than half of the 79 nonprofit colleges and universities that have closed or merged since 2020, or announced that they will close or merge, were religiously affiliated, according to the Hechinger Report .
The difficulty of surviving as a higher education institution comes at a time when the Trump administration is intent on reforming colleges and universities. In doing so, it has cut federal funding , scaled back on student loan repayments and abruptly revoked international student visas and statuses .
Struggling institutions
In Massachusetts, over two dozen colleges and universities have closed or merged over the past decade due to financial and enrollment difficulties.
Of those, five were religiously affiliated, including Andover-Newton Theological Seminary in 2017, Episcopal Divinity School in 2017, Marian Court College in 2017, Atlantic Union College in 2019 and Eastern Nazarene College this year. Not included in the total is Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which closed its branch campus in Massachusetts in 2021.
Meanwhile, Boston Baptist College and Northpoint Bible College are financially unstable and/or at risk of imminent closure, according to the commonwealth's public watchlist of institutions, which was created after the abrupt closure of Mount Ida College in 2018 . No others have been added since.
Anna Maria College, a private Catholic college in Paxton, is one of two Massachusetts colleges "in danger" of not meeting institutional resources, according to letters sent in recent months from the accreditation agency, the New England Commission of Higher Education.
"The rising generations today have less and less confidence in standardized institutions across the board, whether that's government in Congress, whether that's organized religion, even standard education," said Michael Hammond, the president of Gordon College, a Christian college in Wenham.
For Eastern Nazarene College, the challenges were numerous, according to Benjamin.
They included offering too much financial aid to athletes or international students in an effort to attract more students to the institution, not having a large enough donor base, dormitories and infrastructure being in decay, and not being able to adapt quickly enough to educational opportunities like online learning, Benjamin said.
Smaller institutions, especially those that are religiously affiliated, will face tremendous challenges like these in the coming years, he said.
"If these small institutions aren't engaging in the kind of long-range planning to prepare itself — to start preparing now for 10 years from now — I think they will also have the same fate," Benjamin said.
Religiously affiliated institutions are also in a tough spot at a time when higher education is facing enrollment declines, as there are fewer traditionally college-aged students in the United States.
This situation, known as a "demographic cliff," has affected several institutions in Massachusetts.
Montserrat College of Art in Beverly was the other institution that the New England Commission of Higher Education warned about not meeting institutional resources.
Following Eastern Nazarene College's closure announcement, Bard College at Simon's Rock said in November it would close its campus due to declining enrollment.
Clark University and Worcester Polytechnic Institute have recently announced layoffs.
"Small colleges, no matter what their affiliation, face significant challenges to generate enough net cash from operations. The basic economics of too many colleges and not enough students willing to pay even the substantially discounted tuition for those colleges is the main factor that will continue to drive college consolidation," Stocker of College Viability said. "Those that survive the closure period we are in now will look to engage in substantive mergers in the coming years."
Religiously affiliated institutions might not be what you think
Rob Hartman, the former chief financial officer at Eastern Nazarene College, said religiously affiliated institutions can succeed if they don't force religion on students or faculty.
Since community college became free and there are more incentives to attend state universities, he said, religiously affiliated schools need to show students why they are unique enough to have a student pay potentially more to attend. They have to be adaptable.
"Christian schools, I'd have to say, in my experience, are the worst at changing," Hartman said.
However, that's not the case for all institutions — especially those that are more established with larger donor bases.
Assumption University, the private, Roman Catholic university in Worcester, faced declining enrollment post-pandemic.
But since 2022, enrollment has been increasing year by year, according to Bill Boffi, the vice president of enrollment at Assumption.
There has been a 45% increase in new student enrollment since 2022, he said. The institution has comparable numbers to what they had pre-pandemic.
Part of what Boffi believes has attracted students to the institution is having a Jewish president who shows that people of different backgrounds are welcome at Assumption.
"I think the biggest misperception is that Catholic colleges are for Catholic people," he said.
Greg Weiner, the president of Assumption, said that if he had one message to Jewish students considering attending a Catholic or religiously affiliated institution, it would be that "these kinds of institutions are places where education is valued."
"I do think there is an understandable concern among Jewish families that what Catholic universities do is evangelize. We certainly are a Catholic institution through and through, but there are different kinds of Catholic institutions," he said.
Benjamin, the former vice president of multicultural affairs at Eastern Nazarene College, agreed. He said there was a stereotype of what a religiously affiliated institution is — conservative and not tolerant of LGBTQ+ students — but Eastern Nazarene was the opposite.
Attempting to buck the trend
While religiously affiliated institutions aren't "immune" to the challenges plaguing higher education, many are also able to push back against some of the declining enrollment trends, according to Amanda Staggenborg, vice president of communications at the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities.
"We have a number of our institutions that are thriving and we have a number of our institutions that have enrollment and records increases," she said.
One draw to religiously affiliated institutions is that Christian universities have been seen as a "safe, stable environment" to prospective students and parents as protests erupted across colleges in response to the war in Gaza.
Hammond, president of Gordon College, said the college is well-positioned because it is nondenominational. The fact that the institution is religiously affiliated can often be a draw for a student, he said.
"If you look at most small colleges and you see them making cuts, they're going to make cuts in the arts, they're going to make cuts in music programs. In fact, we've actually been able to establish a name school with some philanthropic support that will continue to make the arts one of our premier programs," he said.
Hammond said the institution has seen the greatest number of Massachusetts and New England residents attending in the last eight years, last fall.
That is in part from a bump in transfers from Eastern Nazarene College's closure.
After years of enrollment decline, it increased to 1,314 enrolled students in the 2024-2025 academic year, according to the institutional data.
In New Hampshire, at private Benedictine liberal arts college Saint Anselm College, first-year classes have also been steadily increasing in size over the last several years, according to Steven Goetsch, vice president of enrollment.
Incoming first-year classes have grown from 480 in Fall 2021 to 672 deposited students in Fall 2025 as of late-May — an all-time record number for the institution.
He also pointed to the school's student retention rate of 90% and four-year graduation rate of 84%.
Part of the reason for the increase, Goetsch attributed to investment in academic programs and facilities that address the "growing crisis in health care staffing" through its nursing and health science program and a new $35 million building for it.
The school has also added new athletic teams and is renovating housing to modernize and accommodate a larger population.
"I think the unique integration of academic excellence, enduring timeless universal values, and a formative career focused skills-based liberal arts core is what truly sets Saint Anselm apart," he said.
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