Holy Cross College in November 2026

November 2026

The college now: In its sixtieth year Holy Cross College stands as what its catalog calls itself: a Catholic, residential, liberal arts college in the Notre Dame census-designated place, just north of the South Bend city limits, at 54515 State Road 933 North, operated by the Midwest Province of the Brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross. It is an autonomous institution — its catalog says so in so many words — adjacent to the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary's College, associated with both by history, geography, and working arrangements, and governed by neither. Its degrees are its own, chartered by the State of Indiana: the Bachelor of Arts, the Bachelor of Science, and the Associate of Arts. Its accreditor is the Higher Learning Commission, with which it stands accredited, most recently reaffirmed in 2016–2017, and with a comprehensive evaluation scheduled in its next reaffirmation cycle on 7 December 2026, weeks after this record closes.

Its size is a few hundred students, and the figures are printed as the sources give them, because they do not perfectly agree. The federal data for 2024–2025 give 661 students, all undergraduate — the highest figure in the college's federal series, up from a low of 434 in fall 2022. The college's own at-a-glance page, current for 2026–2027, rounds enrollment to 600, on a campus it describes as seventy acres of woods, with students from more than thirty-six states and the District of Columbia and sixteen countries, sixty-two percent men, and thirty-two percent first-generation students. Its February 2026 contract-extension announcement gives the direction rather than a headcount: record growth of more than forty percent since 2022. All three are printed; the federal series is the one a later checker can recompute. The campus acreage carries its own history: directories long listed 140 to 150 acres, the whole Brothers' holding; the present seventy-acre figure dates from after the 2017 sale of seventy-five acres to the university, ground the college still occupies in part under the dollar-a-year leaseback. Tuition and fees for 2026–2027 stand at 37,470 dollars on the college's own page. Its endowment was reported at 6.72 million dollars for fiscal 2025 in the national endowment study — against which set the college's announced 9.4 million dollars of contributions in calendar 2025, and the record individual gift recorded in the base fragment.

Its teaching in 2026 is a liberal arts core rebuilt in this decade — a new integrated curriculum, on its February 2026 announcement — offered through the majors its current list names, fifteen on the at-a-glance count, with biology and computer science as its two bachelor of science degrees and the rest bachelor of arts fields running from business and elementary education to public health, physical sciences, and sport-culture-and-formation, with twenty-one minors. There is no nursing degree in the college's charter or its majors list, and none is printed here: what the college has built instead are pathway programs in business and health sciences, preferred-admission routes from its biology degree toward professional study in fields such as osteopathic medicine, pharmacy, physical therapy, and physician assistant work, and its first neuroscience laboratory, established in the modernization of its science spaces in 2025–2026. The experiential frame is older and remains: service learning, a global immersion required of its bachelor of arts students, a professional internship, and a capstone. Cross-registration is practical, not governmental: students with thirty credit hours and a 3.0 average may take classes at the university at no extra cost, courses move among the three schools through the Northern Indiana Consortium for Education, the Gateway Program still sends its invited first-years across the road as sophomores, and its prison teaching at Westville continues under the accreditor's February 2025 approval of a Pell-eligible prison program. In 2025 the college also stepped off its own ground, launching with the university and a Lilly Endowment grant a Center for Leadership and Professional Excellence in the former South Bend Tribune building downtown.

Its athletics stand at fact size. The Saints compete in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics, in the Chicagoland Collegiate Athletic Conference, joined for 2009–2010 after three years as an independent in the Association of Independent Institutions. The college fields eight varsity teams: men's and women's basketball, golf, soccer, and tennis. The record results are these. Men's basketball won the college's first conference championship and made its first national tournament appearance in 2020, returned in 2021, and finished 2020 ranked tenth nationally. Women's soccer won its first conference regular-season championship in fall 2025 and made the program's first national championship trip. Men's tennis won its fourth consecutive conference championship on 22 April 2026, defeating Judson University in the final without dropping a match. Nothing larger is claimed, because nothing larger is documented.

Its relation to its neighbors, printed exactly, is this. Holy Cross College is a separate corporation, sponsored by the Midwest Province of the Brothers, holding its own Indiana charter, accreditation, president and board, admissions, tuition, degrees, and endowment. The University of Notre Dame is conducted by a different province of the same congregation, and Saint Mary's College by the Sisters of the Holy Cross; the three share a founder's family, a road, dining and course arrangements, a shuttle route, and sixty years of transfer traffic. They do not share a government. The smallest of the three, Holy Cross College enters its seventh decade growing, solvent on its own account, and — for the first time in its course — led by a layman under contract through 2030.

Sources:

1. Holy Cross College Academic Catalogs 2024–2025 and 2026–2027 — autonomy beside its neighbors, the Indiana charter (BA, BS, AA), location north of the South Bend limits, consortium and cross-registration arrangements.
2. Holy Cross College about page, current for 2026–2027 — seventy-acre campus, enrollment rounded to 600, student-body composition, tuition and fees of 37,470 dollars, fifteen majors and twenty-one minors, the eight NAIA teams.
3. National Center for Education Statistics data, 2024–2025, via directories read — enrollment of 661 and the fall 2022 low of 434; national endowment study, fiscal 2025 — endowment of 6.72 million dollars.
4. Higher Learning Commission statement — accredited standing, 2016–2017 reaffirmation, evaluation scheduled 7 December 2026, February 2025 approval of the Pell-eligible prison program.
5. Holy Cross College announcement, 13 February 2026, and 2025–2026 construction and opening accounts — growth above forty percent since 2022, 2025 contributions of 9.4 million dollars, pathways, neuroscience laboratory, integrated curriculum, the downtown Center for Leadership and Professional Excellence (2025).
6. Holy Cross College and Saints athletics releases — men's basketball 2020 and 2021, women's soccer fall 2025, men's tennis 22 April 2026.