Why Is Campus So Empty At Colorado Christian University? What Parents Should Know Before Visiting
We pulled into Colorado Christian University’s main parking lot in Lakewood on a sun-warmed Tuesday in mid-April, 10 minutes early for our scheduled info session and campus tour. My 17-year-old daughter Lila had marked CCU as her top choice a month earlier—she wanted a small Christian college with a nursing program, and the website’s photos of students laughing on the quad and singing at campus worship looked exactly like the experience she’d been daydreaming about. We locked the car, walked past the sign for the Center for World Views, and out into the main quad. Lila stopped mid-step. “Mom,” she said. “Where is everyone?”
There wasn’t a single group hanging out on the grass. No one leaned against a tree texting between classes. The only person we saw was a student in a CCU hoodie zooming past on a mountain bike, never slowing down. We wandered over to the student union; half the lights were off, the game room was dark, and only one coffee stand was open. There were three people sitting at tables total, all on laptops, none talking. By the time we got to the admissions office for our info session, I was as confused as Lila was. The session ended up being just our family and a 16-year-old boy from central Oregon with his dad.
After the 45-minute tour, I asked our guide straight out why the campus felt so quiet. She explained it straightforwardly: 70% of CCU’s total student body is online, most of them adult learners working full-time who never come to campus. The traditional on-campus undergraduate program hovers around 2,000 students, down from almost 3,000 a decade ago. Most on-campus undergrads take at least one or two hybrid classes, so even students enrolled full-time aren’t on campus every day. Lila frowned and said, “That’s not what the website said. It says ‘close-knit residential campus community.’” The guide nodded, said that’s still what they offer for students who want it, but they’ve grown their online programs a lot over the last 10 years because that’s where the demand is. That makes sense for the school’s bottom line, I get that. But it didn’t make sense for what we were looking for.
I texted my cousin, who graduated from CCU in 2012, while we waited for our impromptu chat with a current student. She texted back right away: When I went here, you couldn’t find an open bench on the quad after lunch. Dorms were full all weekend, the coffee shop in the union had a line out the door every morning. My cousin’s cousin goes there now, she added. She only has two in-person classes a week, and she’s never even been to a campus basketball game.
When we met the junior nursing student they connected us with, she confirmed that. She commuted from an apartment 10 minutes away, said most of her classmates did the same, and that most planned social events got canceled if fewer than 10 people signed up. She liked the small class sizes and the program’s faith alignment, she said, but she didn’t spend any time on campus outside of her scheduled classes. That was all the info Lila needed.
I’ve been helping a few other parents with college visits this year, and I always tell them that the “where is everyone?” question is the most important one no one talks about. A lot of small private colleges, especially religious ones, have shifted heavily to online education over the last decade because it draws students from across the country who can’t move to campus, and it’s more reliable financially. But they still market their residential undergraduate program the same way they did 20 years ago, with the same photos of crowded quads and spirited events. You won’t see the breakdown of online vs. on-campus students front and center on their homepage.
I’ve started telling parents to do three simple things before they even drive to campus, right after booking your tour. First, pull up the college’s profile on the National Center for Education Statistics’ College Navigator website. It’s free, no ads, and it lists exactly how many full-time, on-campus undergraduate students are enrolled. That number is almost always smaller than the “total enrollment” number colleges put front and center—total enrollment includes all online students, grad students, and part-time learners you’ll never see on the quad. For CCU, that number checks out: total enrollment is over 7,000, but only about 1,800 are full-time on-campus undergrads. That’s a big difference when you’re expecting a bustling campus.
Second, when you email to confirm your tour, ask the admissions rep three specific questions: What percentage of traditional undergrads take three or more in-person classes a week? How many undergrads live on campus for all four years, not just the first two? Can you connect me with a current on-campus student who can meet us for 15 minutes after the tour, off the record? The rep will almost always say yes, and that chat will tell you more than any scripted tour will.
Third, always schedule your visit for a mid-week day (Tuesday or Wednesday work best) in the middle of the semester, not during an admitted students event or a weekend. Schools pack special events with students to make campus look busy, and on weekends most residential students leave town anyway. We went on a Tuesday mid-semester, so what we saw was the real, normal day, not a show.
Lila ended up crossing CCU off her list a week after our visit. She’s starting at a small Christian college in Colorado Springs this fall, where the full-time on-campus undergrad population is just over 3,000, and when we visited, we could barely find a place to park, and the quad was so crowded we had to walk around the edge to get to the admissions office. That’s exactly what she wanted—she wanted the messy, spontaneous stuff that happens when you run into people between classes, when you can stop and get coffee with a friend last minute, when there’s always something going on if you want it.
I still get emails from CCU’s admissions team every couple of months, inviting Lila to apply. I delete them, mostly. That visit wasn’t a waste, though. It taught me that the most obvious question—where is everyone?—is also the easiest one to forget to ask. CCU works really well for the thousands of online students who want a flexible Christian degree. It just wasn’t the right fit for what Lila wanted. And that’s the thing: you’ll never know if you don’t ask, and you’ll never see the real campus if you don’t show up on a normal Tuesday and look around for yourself.
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