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Published: January 13, 2008

Half-full or half-empty?

Study finds students grow more “spiritual” as they progress through college, but are much less likely to go to church

Colleges are not the “bastions of secularism” many believe them to be, reported the Jan. 5 Los Angeles Times. The newspaper reached that conclusion based on a study carried out by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, which says it found that interest in spiritual and ethical issues increases as students go through college.

The study, the results of which were announced in a Dec. 18 news release from the institute, was based on a survey of 14,527 college students on 136 U.S. campuses. Interviews with students commenced when they were freshmen in Fall 2004 and resumed when they were juniors in Spring 2007.

According to the study, college juniors are more likely than freshmen “to be engaged in a spiritual quest, are more caring, and show higher levels of equanimity and an ecumenical worldview.” In 2007, 55.4% of juniors (as opposed to 41.2% of freshmen in 2004) said they considered “developing a meaningful philosophy of life ‘very important’ or ‘essential.’” And, while 48.7% of freshmen in 2004 said “attaining inner harmony” was “very important” or “essential,” 62.6% of juniors expressed that sentiment in 2007.

“Spiritual” life goals that students said were very important or essential were “integrating spirituality into my life” (41.8% in 2004, to 50.4% in 2007), “seeking beauty in my life” (53.7% to 66.2%) and “becoming a more loving person” (67.4% to 82.8%).

Other “spiritual values” that saw an increase in acceptance from freshman to junior years were “helping others in difficulty” and “reducing pain and suffering in the world.” A larger percentage of juniors than freshmen indicated an attitude of “being thankful for all that has happened to me.”

Yet, while “spiritual values” were supposedly up in colleges and, indeed, "student interest in spirituality and religion is at a level not seen since perhaps the 1950s," according to religion scholar Rebecca Chopp, “college students’ attendance at religious services,” says the study’s news release, “indicates a steep decline: the rate of frequent attendance drops from 43.7 percent in high school to 25.4 percent in college, and the rate of non-attendance nearly doubles, from 20.2 percent to 37.5 percent.”

The study also found that, during their college years, “students become more liberal in their political ideology and attitudes toward socio-cultural issues.”

“Looking towards the future, we can envision a college educated workforce that is more inclusive and accepting of persons from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, and at the same time more caring and more collaborative,” said UCLA professor emeritus Helen Astin, an investigator for the study. “These qualities are critical to an effective workforce of the future.”

Other studies have found a decline in religious observance and commitment to the Christian faith among young people. According to a study released in September by the Barna Group, a Christian research organization in Ventura, over the past 10 years, the number of non-Christian youth who feel “favorably toward Christianity’s role in society” has plummeted from a majority to only 16%.

© California Catholic Daily 2008. All Rights Reserved.