Undergraduate Enrollment Down 28% in 10 Years - Who is to Blame?

Each year, Gordon College quietly releases their Common Data Set - a spreadsheet detailing data on the school's enrollment, academic offerings, admissions procedures, etc. The CDS for the 2025-26 school year has been released - revealing that Gordon's undergraduate enrollment for fall 2025 sits at 1,221 students. Compared to the 1,694 undergraduates enrolled in the fall of 2015, this number has fallen nearly 28% in the last decade. In fact, this number is the lowest fall enrollment the college has experienced since 1994 - over 30 years ago. But with all of the growth the college is experiencing in recent years - including the newly announced Adams Center for Music - why has Gordon been unable to keep its student body at consistent, let alone increasing, numbers? 

It should first be noted that since Gordon's peak enrollment of 1,736 in 2014, the college has seen a mostly steady decline even before the "cliff" that threatened many Christian colleges during the COVID-19 pandemic. The summer before the 2014-15 school year, then-president of Gordon D. Michael Lindsay wrote a letter to Barack Obama which shoved Gordon into the center of a very public conversation regarding the Christian response to LGBTQ issues. I won't get into the details since the topic has been talked to death at this point, but I can't help but wonder if these controversies, which plague so much of the school's public image, are a main contributor to the drop in enrollment throughout the next decade.

This, however, cannot be the only cause for Gordon's lack of growth. Faith-based education has been declining since COVID-19 nationwide, leading to closures of prominent Christian colleges in the Northeast including Alliance University and The King's College in New York, Clarks Summit University in Pennsylvania, and most recently Eastern Nazarene College in nearby Quincy. In fact, Gordon is one of only six Protestant colleges left in New England, a number which is likely to go down further within the next year (more on that in my next article). Is Gordon another victim of the post-pandemic struggle for Christ-centered learning? This is likely a contributing factor, as there has been little growth in enrollment despite administration announcing a 33% reduction in tution before the 2021-22 school year. It is because of this plateau that beginning next school year, students will be paying more than what was charged before the cuts were made, effectively ending the cost-reduction campaign the school so valiantly tried to enact.

Another possible explanation is that new immigration policies have impacted the amount of international students Gordon has been able to enroll. In the fall, Gordon reported 81 nonresident undergraduates, a decrease of 33 students since the prior fall. Despite making up less than 10% of the student population, this change in international attendees accounts for more than a third of the undergraduates we've lost since last year. Could the new administration's stricter immigration policies be to blame for this? This seems likely. From May to August 2025, 170,933 F1 visas were granted to students hoping to study in the United States. Over ninety-seven thousand more student visas were granted during the same time frame last year. This drop in F1 issuances nearly matches the reduced number of international students Gordon is experiencing this year. Whether it be harsher criteria for those entering the states, or media narratives increasing discomfort with traveling to the States, the new immigration policies of the Trump administration are clearly a major contributor to Gordon's struggle to achieve a larger student body.

Disclaimer of non-partisanship: The author of this article does not believe in partisan politics and is not affiliated with a political party. They believe that most federal politicians are working for their own good and not the good of the people. The Gordian does not intend to support a particular officeholder, party, or political alignment. The conclusions stated above are based purely on data and not on personal belief.