Stephen Jones describes how this conservative Christian university serves a niche created by changing attitudes.

During the early 20th century, most religious colleges quietly backed away from their founding Christian principles. Youngsters raised in conservative Christian homes attending secular school and non-conservative religious schools often came home with an altered or rejected faith.

That is when preacher Bob Jones, a witness to this increasing trend, received his calling: to provide an academic safe haven for conservative Christian students. Founded in 1927, today, BJU offers more than 100 undergraduate majors and 70 graduate degrees to more than 4,000 students from all 50 states and between 40 and 50 foreign countries.

According to Dr. Stephen Jones, fourth-generation president of BJU, the university’s tremendous growth isn’t due to a complex business strategy. “We grew as families realized that traditional schools were adopting the modern critical approach to scripture and began looking for an alternative. We were—and still are—one of few conservative Christian liberal arts schools. Other universities started out with a similar mission to ours but have changed their direction over the years.”

Dr. Stephen Jones, President

Since the early days, BJU met most accreditation standards but couldn’t find an accrediting organization that would sympathize with its mission as a religious institution. As a result, the university let academic excellence speak for itself, “and for years, our graduates have been accepted at graduate schools and companies that normally wouldn’t accept anyone without an accredited degree,” said Jones, who took the helm in 2005.

But during the Reagan administration, the Transnational Association of Christian Colleges and Schools (TRACS) was formed to grant accreditation to Christian colleges, seminaries, and universities under standards set forth by the Department of Education and the Council for Higher Education. Jones explained that BJU watched TRACS for nearly 25 years before it decided to seek accreditation. “You never know if an organization is going to
take root.”

Within nine months of submitting its application, BJU received “candidate” status, which is good for five years. According to Jones, to receive accredited status, BJU had to create a coordinated assessment plan that determined how each major, division, course, and assignment contributed to the university’s mission. “We also had to formalize the documentation in some areas. Much of it was stored in heads previously, so we needed detailed reports. Many of our schools were already doing that, it just wasn’t being done across the board.”

Internally, receiving accreditation has improved motivation and morale among staff and administration, and it has been a great boon to students. The armed forces and several institutions of higher learning, which previously did not accept applicants from unaccredited schools, have begun to accept BJU graduates.

BJU isn’t just concerned about college-aged students keeping the faith. Since 1973, the university has been publishing curricula and text books for kindergarten through 12th grade. “Education isn’t neutral; it is influenced by certain assumptions of the person(s) writing the text book. We saw a shortage of material that was academically sound and reflective of the Bible.”

The curricula BJU has created doesn’t ignore evolution, but lessons are based on a creationist point of view. “Again, this goes back to our founding purpose to help families teach children conservative Christian values in an academically challenging setting,” said Jones, adding that more than 1 million students from around the globe use BJU’s text books in their studies.

Also feeding back to the original mission is BJU’s distance learning programs.

Currently, more than 45,000 K-12 students across the country tune into dozens of live instructional broadcasts or receive lessons via DVD. The medium is perfect for parents who home school their children but don’t feel comfortable teaching certain topics or for schools with limited budgets that may not be able to afford, say, a qualified chemistry teacher.

Presently, BJU is undergoing a major IT transformation. Over the years, the university considered a number of software programs that promised to integrate financial aid, registration, and other
university-centric functions, but nothing seemed to fit. So, BJU decided to develop its own, which it has been doing for the past eight years.

The program tracks prospective students’ pre-college performance, keeps records of their performance once they are accepted to BJU, and allows for easy registration.

This year was the first students were able to register online. Students are given real-time feedback as to class availability, and if a class is full, the program suggests alternative courses being offered during that time period that fit into the student’s course requirements. For the near future, BJU has plans to integrate financial aid into the system and make registration even easier by tying in students’ work schedules.

“When TRACS representatives were here in September, several of them looked at our program and said, ‘this is the first one we’ve seen that has everything we want. Are you marketing it?’ We’re not marketing it at this point, but it is encouraging to hear that what our own folks created is a hit with others,” said Jones.