How College Affects Students

Col­lege can be a dan­ger­ous place for a Chris­tian’s faith!

To begin with, 2 out of every 3 teenagers involved with a youth group already plan to leave the church once they’re on their own (i.e., in col­lege). One out of every 8 bails on the church before they even set foot on the col­lege cam­pus (Leonard Sweet, SoulT­suna­mi page 47).

Even leav­ing that dis­turb­ing fact aside, col­lege isn’t too kind to the faith of stu­dents.

Quotes from Pas­carel­la and Teren­zi­ni: How Col­lege Affects
Stu­dents: Find­ings and Insights From Twen­ty Years of Research

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“the lit­er­a­ture pub­lished since 1967 fair­ly con­sis­tent­ly reports sig­nif­i­cant declines in reli­gious atti­tudes, val­ues, and behav­iors dur­ing the col­lege years.” p 280–281

“The like­li­hood of chang­ing to no reli­gious
pref­er­ence was also high­est at so-called elite insti­tu­tions.” p 303

“In prob­a­bly the strongest stud­ies on this point, Astin (1972b, 1977a) found (net of oth­er per­son­al and back­ground fac­tors) sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater than expect­ed decreas­es in con­ven­tion­al reli­gious affil­i­a­tion and in reli­gious­ness (that is, pray­ing and read­ing the Bible) among stu­dents attend­ing selec­tive or pres­ti­gious schools.”

But there is hope: in the same vol­ume, the authors state:
“Only a hand­ful of stud­ies exam­ine
the long-term effects of col­lege on reli­gious atti­tudes and val­ues,
but with one excep­tion, they indi­cate that changes in this area occur
dur­ing but appar­ent­ly not after the col­lege years.” p 323

In oth­er words, col­lege is our last chance to reach a gen­er­a­tion! That’s why there must be cam­pus min­istry at sec­u­lar col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties!