BYU system has added 100,000 students since 2000

Yahoo

13-06-2025

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WASHINGTON — Startling data about BYU and its sister schools jumped out Monday during a panel discussion at a convening of 52 presidents of the ACE Commission on Faith-based Colleges and Universities.
The panel included the presidents of Notre Dame, Yeshiva, Taylor and Lipscomb and was led by Elder Clark G. Gilbert, church commissioner of education for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Elder Gilbert, who is also a General Authority Seventy, and others expressed frustration with journalists who write what two university presidents described as clickbait stories focused on the closures of small, underfunded faith-based colleges.
'Since 2000, the network of BYU schools has grown by almost 100,000 students,' Elder Gilbert said, 'and yet all I read is, 'Faith-based schools are closing.''
The point was that despite some closures of smaller, faith-based colleges and universities, enrollment in that sector isn't shrinking. Far from it. In fact, enrollment growth in the faith sector as a whole is outpacing enrollment growth nationally.
The growth in Latter-day Saint education is not surprising. The Deseret News reported in a November article that the Church of Jesus Christ provided education for nearly 1 million students in 2024, including high school students in seminary programs and college students in institute programs.
But 100,000 students in 20 years is a remarkable increase that comes with two important notes.
First, BYU regularly reports its enrollment of daytime undergraduate students.
Elder Gilbert's statement was for a larger group, an unduplicated headcount of matriculated students. That means they included all students accepted into degree programs, including those taking night classes or online courses at BYU, BYU-Idaho, BYU-Hawaii, Ensign College and BYU-PW.
Second, most church members will correctly anticipate that the vast bulk of the enrollment growth comes from BYU-Pathway Worldwide, which didn't exist in 2000.
BYU-PW has gone from 458 students in 2009 to more than 80,000 this year, according to a statement by BYU-PW President Brian Ashton in April.
Still, BYU and every other school in the church network is serving significantly more students than they did in 2000.
And in all, they served more than 147,000 students as of last fall, a major increase from more than 50,000 in 2000.
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