Enrollment growth at Latter-day Saint universities rebuts narrative about young adults losing faith

This fall, a record total of 117,204 students are enrolled in higher education courses offered by the colleges and universities sponsored by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In fact, more students are enrolled this semester than were attending classes at this time last year at each of the schools in the Church Educational System.
“Counter to the narrative sometimes heard that young people are leaving their faith, the numbers actually show that youth and youth adults in the Church Educational System are flocking to their faith,” said Elder Clark G. Gilbert, the church commissioner of education.
BYU-Idaho has the largest incoming class in its history.
“What we’re seeing in the Church Educational System, what we’re seeing at BYU-Idaho, counters the narrative that young people are turning away from faith and illustrates, really, the true narrative of these amazing young people who want discipleship in their lives,” said Rob Garrett, BYU-Idaho chief of staff and vice president of executive strategy and planning.
The case for a clear desire for religious education among many young people is bolstered by the larger picture of the church system, where the total number of students enrolling in religion classes is even more notable. The system operates seminaries that offer religion courses to high school students and institute classes for college and university students at public and private campuses not affiliated with the Church Educational System.
Enrollment in those seminary and institute classes leapt 18.3% last year to 811,758, up from 764,682 in 2022-23.
Not even the grand total of 928,962 students in CES courses can capture the desire for religious education among Latter-day Saint teens and young adults, Garrett said.
“I see them in this crazy, complex world being true to Jesus Christ, following the prophets, working in the temple,” he said. “Half of the temple workers in the Rexburg Idaho Temple are BYU-Idaho students.”
The church is building a second temple near the BYU–Idaho campus, the Teton River Idaho Temple.
The share of Americans who are nonreligious rose from 5% in 1972 to 28% in 2021, researcher Ryan Burge said this summer during BYU’s Annual Religious Freedom Review.
The numbers are starker among young people. Some 36% of Gen X Americans are nonreligious, and the numbers rise to 42% for millennials and Generation Z, said Burge, who is an associate professor at Eastern Illinois University and a former pastor.
But Burge said the growth of the Nones, or those who have no religion, is slowing.
“I do think we’re seeing a ceiling on the rise of the Nones, and I’m seeing it in multiple data sources right now, locking in about 30% or so,” he said. “It’s staying there for a while now, not forever, but for a while. That period of exponential growth is over, I believe. … I feel much more confident saying that now that we’re not going to get to a position, at least in my lifetime, where over half of Americans identify as non-religious. I think it’ll stick around 45% or so for the foreseeable future.”
Garrett and others at CES schools say their campuses are bursting with young people who crave religious education.
That trend is not isolated to Latter-day Saint schools. Inside Higher Ed published a story this week that documented religious college enrollment gains across the country at schools that lean into their religious identity. It chronicled increases at Catholic and evangelical universities. Major Jewish universities, like Yeshiva and Touro, have also reported noteworthy increases this fall.
“Schools that are really doubling down on their Christian mission are doing well,” David Hoag, president of the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities, told IHE. “Families are looking for places that are safe, that are true to kind of the Christian mission and Christ-centered.” These institutions are “leading with their Christian mission and their values and who they are. And I think it’s making a difference.”
This fall’s enrollment growth at CES schools comes as the church system’s leaders are leaning into the uniqueness of Latter-day Saint higher education, not away from it. They say they are honing and highlighting a message around their missions to provide a haven for students who want quality education combined with religious community.
“Some people will try to force us into this idea that you have to choose between being spiritually strong and academically strong,” BYU President Shane Reese said at a meeting for parents and prospective students last week. “But at BYU, we resist that false dichotomy. We resist it because prophets, seers and revelators have prophesied on this campus over and over again that it’s possible.”
The commissioner of Church Education, Elder Clark G. Gilbert, who oversees all of the church campuses, seminaries and institutes, signaled that message in his first talk in his role when he said BYU would not pull away from its religious and spiritual roots the way other American colleges and universities have.
“This is a religious university with a religious purpose,” he said in 2022. “BYU is prophetically led and will remain a spiritual beacon to the world.”
Presidents and other officials at BYU and its sister schools are sharing their mission statements with parents and students. Reese spoke with BYU-Idaho President Alvin Meredith III at one of those meetings at the Marriott Center on BYU’s campus. Meredith and other BYU-Idaho leaders repeatedly declare their mission to build Christ-centered disciple scholars when they meet with prospective students.
The message resonates with young adults.
“They want a church school experience,” Ensign College President Bruce Kusch said. “That’s something very, very important to them.”
Meredith told the recent gathering of prospective students, “One of our students recently said this: ‘I love that I can grow in both my scholarship and discipleship while I’m studying at BYU–Idaho.’”
He also called Jesus Christ the “High Priest of good things to come” and said that good things will come “when we seek to come unto him.”
Other CES leaders spoke at the University of Utah earlier this year and in Las Vegas last year. Elder Gilbert and Reese spoke in Dallas this week.
Kusch said some of the growth at Ensign College — up to 2,575 students this fall after dipping as low as 2,196 due to the COVID-19 pandemic — is partially the story of a rebound as students who put off education return and the college emphasizes retention programs.
But there is more afoot, though, in six consecutive semesters of enrollment growth, he said.
For example, BYU-Idaho and Ensign College received approval from accreditors to launch a revolution by offering three-year bachelor degrees that require 90 to 96 credit hours. The traditional bachelor’s degree takes 120 hours over four or more years. The degrees are offered through BYU-Pathway Worldwide.
Ensign, formerly LDS Business College, has a niche mission to help students connect to careers in two years or less with certificates and degrees. “We want to help students accelerate the time to a degree, which means they’ll get to earning instead of spending faster, earning because of a job instead of spending for college,” Kusch said. The school’s new bachelor’s degrees fit well with some of its shorter programs, he said, and the school is awaiting accreditation for its own 90-credit bachelor’s degrees.
Ensign College is looking at other new enrollment accelerators, such as offering more competency-based courses and providing more credits to students through prior learning assessments, the president said.
For Ensign, the online degrees it now supports through BYU-PW mean it is involved in educating far more students than the 2,575 on campus this fall.
Kusch said Ensign has an additional 5,700 students working toward degrees online through BYU-PW. Another 3,000 are taking a BYU-PW on-ramp college course.
“So in all, we have over 10,000 students,” Kusch said.
BYU-PW’s explosive global growth is a long-running story. For the 2024 calendar year, BYU-PW has served 74,837 students in over 180 countries, said Krista Tripodi, the school’s director of communications.
That’s an increase of 14% over the previous year.
Pathway enrollment breaks down into two groups:
BYU-Pathway has set enrollment records every year since its launch in 2009 as it rapidly expands into Africa, South America and other places around the world.
“BYU-Pathway’s growth in 2024 was primarily driven by the new three-year bachelor’s degrees offered in conjunction with BYU-Idaho and Ensign College, which reduced the time and cost of a degree by 25%,” BYU-PW President Brian Ashton said.
“In addition, BYU-Pathway is seeing improved retention among our students in Africa. African students now persist at the same or better rates as our students in the U.S. and Canada. This has been a long-term trend,” he said.
The percentage of eligible Latter-day Saint teenagers enrolled in seminary — nearly 57% — is another new CES record, Elder Gilbert said.
The number of seminary students has increased by more than 125,000 students in the last three years.
Elder Gilbert said Latter-day Saint youth are following church President Russell M. Nelson’s advice to let God prevail in their lives.
Latter-day Saint college students at other colleges and universities are also increasingly enrolled in the CES institute classes. For example, the University of Utah Institute of Religion enrollment is up substantially. Last year, the institute offered 117 activities that drew 25,000 young adults.
About 10,000 seminary and institute students packed the University of Utah’s Huntsman Center in October for a devotional with Elder Ronald A. Rasband of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Elder Rasband also sits on the Church Board of Education, which acts as the board of trustees for the BYUs and Ensign College.
Elder Rasband noted that President Nelson has pleaded with the young church members to take charge of their testimonies. “Work for it. Own it. Care for it. Nurture it so that it will grow. Feed it truth,” President Nelson said.
“That will happen if you are involved in seminary and institute,” Elder Rasband told students at the devotional.
Elder Gilbert attributed some of the growth to efforts to make seminary and institute courses more relevant and accessible to teens and young adults.
“But it is hard to explain the enrollment growth simply as an administrative phenomenon,” he said. “Something powerful is happening in the lives of young people in the church. There are deeper reasons why seminary attendance, institute participation and enrollment in church schools are all growing.
“As we have reflected on it, we keep coming back to President Nelson’s instruction about the blessings of the temple covenants. Young people are increasingly entering the temple and making covenants. There are many fruits of those covenants, but one of them is an increased desire to be in seminary, institute and church schools.”