A few weeks ago, Trinity Christian College announced that it would be closing its doors after the spring 2026 semester. The Chicagoland school had served the Dutch Reformed community and others for almost 70 years, had a strong nursing program, and gave a priority to the Christian worldview.

Back in 2023, Trinity International University, the other Trinity in the Chicago area, announced that its undergraduate program would be moved online, with no residential option offered. A few months ago, its grad school, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School announced it would fold into another seminary in Vancouver. In July, The King’s College in New York City, which had been struggling for a while, announced it would permanently close. Many observers predict that there will be more announcements in the weeks and months to come.

Institutions of higher education face a perfect storm of factors.?Enrollments have not kept up with expectations, leaving high debt and empty buildings. During Covid, students, staff, and administrators got used to “zoom classes,” especially how moving online avoids the trouble of feeding, housing, and entertaining students.??

And, of course, too many educators are more interested in creating activists rather than educating students. What has long been an endemic reality at “secular” schools is also the case at many once-faithful Christian institutions that fell captive to the Critical Theory mood that pervades the rest of academic culture. Why would Christian parents spend thousands on an education that “progressed” beyond biblical authority and historic Christian morality when the education offered is indistinguishable from cheaper, secular options? Many parents have learned the hard way about mission drift at Christian colleges.

Though hard to accept, and not necessarily the case with the colleges already mentioned, the closure of some schools is an overdue blessing. Too many ostensibly Christian schools are institutional versions of “Christian merch,” no different than regular t-shirts but with a few “Jesus words” pressed on. If Christian schools do not offer anything unique, then there’s no point in having Christian schools in the first place.

This crisis is an opportunity. The Church has always been an innovative and redemptive force in education for the glory of God and the life of the world. The Church values learning because of what it knows about God, His world, and His image bearers. The entire Western educational system, in fact, is rooted in practices and customs flowing from the ideals and beliefs of Christianity.

These same ideals can animate new opportunities for educational excellence.?After all, the contemporary educational system is struggling, too. We can neither abandon education nor compromise with a failed system. Rather, Christians should offer something better.

What C.S. Lewis wrote about books in God in the Dock, applies just as much to higher education:

What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects—with their Christianity latent. You can see this most easily if you look at it the other way round. Our Faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defense of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books. In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian.

Our challenge and opportunity is to be better. What if, when a watching world was looking for a place to send their kids or find their employees, the best option on the market was by a Christian? Instead of fearing these closures as the end of an era, believers need to see this as a chance for a new start, clearing out the things that have failed while still building on what made Christian education great to begin with.

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