Should ex-Mormon BYU students be treated the same as non-Mormon students?

A small group of (I believe) formerly active members of the Church are complaining that, while BYU welcomes non-LDS students, merely charging them a slightly higher rate of tuition (functionally equivalent to out-of-state tuition at a public college or university), students who leave the Church aren’t permitted to continue at BYU:

http://www.sltrib.com/news/2288397-155/byu-graduates-complain-to-accrediting-board?fullpage=1

They’ve now formally appealed to accreditation authorities in an attempt to bring pressure against BYU.

They do it in the name of religious freedom and fairness.

I’ll state my own position on this, in brief:

The existence of BYU is an expression of religious freedom — as is the existence of Notre Dame, Baylor, Yeshiva, Ave Maria University, Brandeis, Georgetown, Oral Roberts University, Benedictine College, Liberty University, Gonzaga, Hebrew Union College, the Catholic University of America, and many other such schools.

I would hate to see all of those colleges and universities homogenized.

Yet, in my opinion, admitting people to BYU who haven’t accepted its foundational claims is a distinctly different proposition from leaving it entirely open to people who, having once accepted those claims, now openly reject them.  Choosing the latter course would, over time, erode and very possibly destroy BYU’s distinctive character.

Complete freedom of thought and expression as the filers of this complaint seem to envision it has much to commend, of course.  (In my classes, we routinely — and sympathetically — consider ideas different from, and sometimes plainly incompatible with, Mormon belief, and I’m not only fine with that but enthusiastic about it.)  But it can easily and quickly shade into the perception that the institution stands for nothing, and that everything is up for grabs.  That’s more or less okay at public institutions (even there, though, some ideas — such as advocacy of a second Holocaust and claims of racial inferiority — are out of bounds) but it would be the death knell of religious colleges and universities, including BYU.  They might well survive such a change, but they would be dead nonetheless.

I doubt that that would bother those who’ve petitioned for the change.  But it would bother me enormously, and it would represent a serious and irreparable loss to American education and culture.