Of the 251 Catholic colleges and universities in the U.S., 28 are run by the Society of Jesus. The Society of Jesus, commonly known as the Jesuits, was founded by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1540 and is the largest male religious order of priests and brothers within the Catholic Church. Though St. Ignatius didn’t originally intend to establish schools for the broader public, the Jesuit order quickly became recognized throughout the world for its achievements in education, community service, and the sciences. From the get-go, the Jesuits started compiling a number of documents to outline the kind of education the order would provide. These documents would later become the foundation of what’s known as Ratio Studiorum, the official plan of Jesuit education, published in 1599.

Today’s Jesuit colleges vary greatly in size and extend across the U.S., though they’re most concentrated in the Northeast and along the West Coast. Loyola University Chicago is the school with the largest undergraduate population, with roughly 10,000 students enrolled.* Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia is the smallest, serving approximately 1,200 undergrads. Other well-known Jesuit schools include Fordham University, Boston College, and Georgetown University."

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On February 26, 2014, in the dimly lit Walker’s Pub on Regis University’s main campus, a group gathered with more than Irish-Catholic fellowship on the brain. Students, faculty, and staff came to voice their concerns about Regis’ Catholic identity, confronted with the question "Is Regis Catholic Enough?"

"As compared to what?" asked Randolph Lumpp, a professor of religious studies at Regis. "I suppose part of that would depend to some degree on what you mean by Regis. Are we talking about students, or the faculty, or the groundskeepers, or the constitution of the corporate foundation?"

Lumpp started at Regis in 1959 as a freshman, and he began teaching at the university in 1972. When he was a student at Regis, almost every instructor was Jesuit and the university was open only to men. The few women on campus were those in religious orders. But times have changed. No specific religious affiliation is required to attend a Jesuit college; at a majority of the schools, between a third and two-thirds of the students self-identify as Catholic.

"A university doesn’t exist in a vacuum," Lumpp said. "It is a reflection of the world in which it exists. The world in which Regis exists is really different from what it was like in 1959."

A fourth of the 28 Jesuit colleges and universities currently have lay presidents, and the number of Jesuit priests who are active in everyday operations at the schools isn’t nearly as high as it once was. Meanwhile, the schools are scrambling to stay on top of enrollment numbers necessary to retain their endowments. In other words, as they endeavor to meet the needs of their stakeholders, Jesuit universities face greater financial pressure and a nationwide decline in religious affiliation.