That is what Rick Santorum claimed in a This Week interview with George Stephanopoulos that aired on February 26. Santorum cited research for his conclusion. Or rather, a hazily recalled impression that some study had found that 60 percent of students lose their religious affiliation during the college years.
Intrigued by the Santorum claim, I did a little fact checking. According to religious sociologists Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker (1), "64 percent of those currently enrolled in a traditional four-year institution have curbed their [church] attendance habits." This may be the research evidence that Santorum remembered.
This is a substantial majority and might appear to bolster the view that students are heavily influenced by free-thinking college professors who challenge religious views by encouraging rational skepticism, or even promoting atheism.
Yet, there is one ugly fact that destroys Santorum's theory. When one looks at young people who did not attend college, the decline in church attendance is even greater with 76 percent saying that their religious attendance had fallen.
(Incidentally the numbers actually losing their religious affiliation are much smaller with 13 percent of four-year college students renouncing their religious affiliation compared to 20 percent of those who did not pursue college).
Taken at face value, the data might appear to suggest that going to college promotes religion. This is unlikely however, despite the proselytizing efforts of some religions on American campuses. All that we can reasonably say is that the sort of people who go to college are different from those who do not to begin with.
Either way, Americans who attend college resemble other young people in going to church less often. For many, particularly those who marry, or raise a family, church attendance subsequently picks up, implying that loss of attendance during the college years has little to do with loss of religious belief or affiliation.
While it may seem surprising that exposure to liberal college professors has no discernible effect on religion, it may be that many students have formed stable religious identities by the time they complete high school.
In an earlier post, I argued that the real reason for the decline in religion in modern life is not indoctrination by liberal professors, or atheists, but an improved standard of living.
When nations become highly developed, and when individuals feel secure in the sense of having a reliable income, high life expectancy, little fear of violence, and so forth, they lose interest in supernatural solutions to their problems, focusing instead on practical improvements to the quality of life.
This view of secularization has long been controversial in academic circles but has recently survived rigorous scientific tests. The precise role of education in the loss of religious belief remains unclear but college education, as such, cannot be a large factor.
Despite current uncertainty over whether education kills religion, there are many tantalizing clues. We know that more intelligent people, and more educated people, are more likely to be atheists. Moreover, countries enjoying a high general level of education are much less religious.
Atheism is probably not learned in school -- or in college. Instead, it is the improved quality of life prevailing in highly-educated countries that turns people off religion. Try explaining that to Rick Santorum!
1. Uecker, J. E., Regnerus, M. D., & Vaaler, M. L. (2007). Losing my religion: The social sources of religious decline in early adulthood. Social Forces, 85, 1-26.
Jonathan D. Fitzgerald: Sorry, Santorum: I Am Christian College-Educated and Liberal
Young people believe in God largely because they are very susceptible to religious indoctrination. As they become adults though some of them abandon their religious beliefs because they are not genetically inclined to be religious. Readers may be interested in my chapter on Why People are Religious in my book Choosy Women and Cheating Men. --Tom Shellberg
Pfftt.
Higher education should be promoted indeed.
Anyone who has been a Jehovah Witness for decades like myself knows that college education was a defiant act which surely would get you sanctioned by the JW church.
Fact today this year 2012 the Watchtower leaders of Jehovahs Witnesses have backed off from their no college mandate but for 100 years they said no college I grew up a JW for 50 years and nobody was allowed college.
Here is a helpful chart:
Educational Rank - Religion - Percentage of members that are college grads:
1. Unitarian Universalist: 49.5%
2. Hindu: 47%
3. Jewish: 46.7% 7.
Agnostic: 36.3%
Catholic: 20%
Lutheran: 18%
Seventh Day Adventist: 17.9%
Baptist: 10.4%
Pentecostal: 6.9%
Jehovah's Witnesses: 4.7%
--
Danny Haszard http://www.dannyhaszard.com
Perhaps neither of you are realizing the life of a teenager away from home for the first time. They may have held on to their religious roots by belief but not by practice. They're away from mom and dad's rules, free to eat the forbidden fruits.
While in college, keeping an open mind, they study science and everything else. They graduate and "focus on practical improvements to the quality of life." And enjoy their secular lifestyle, yet still conflicted by their beliefs.
"Those who marry, or raise a family, church attendance subsequently picks up." After they've been there, done that, they return to practicing their belief.
am far more spiritual as I get older. I tend to appreciate the beauty of
nature, the sunsets and sunrises. I just don't like the hypocrites who
say they are Christian but live just the opposite. You know the "take
the beam out of your own eye and you will see clearly enough to remove
the speck from your brother's eye".
I never will believe in a church again. I have never seen the abuse of a church as I ahve seen here as of late. I will pray in a field alone. with others. But I will step into a church again.
Thank you RICK and ROMNEY for opening my eyes to the corruption of th AMERICAN CHURCHES.
I'd say that has more to do with many college students' newfound (relative) freedom than a lack of faith. My college roommate and I were both from out of state. She didn't have mom pounding on her door hounding her to get ready for church on Sunday mornings...that's why she didn't go to church. Didn't mean she was any less Methodist than she was before.