Religion By Major

Check out the results (or see some detailed data) of a nation­al sur­vey of 3,680 stu­dents by UCLA’s High­er Edu­ca­tion Research Insti­tute [which] found that reli­gious com­mit­ment runs strongest among fine arts, edu­ca­tion and human­i­ties majors and low­est among biol­o­gy, his­to­ry and soci­ol­o­gy majors.

I found one excerpt fas­ci­nat­ing: In addi­tion, Astin found that arts and human­i­ties majors were twice as like­ly to exhib­it signs of “spir­i­tu­al dis­tress” — ques­tion­ing beliefs, strug­gling to under­stand evil, wrestling with reli­gious upbring­ing — as busi­ness or com­put­er sci­ence stu­dents.

Still, Astin said it is pre­ma­ture to label all sci­en­tists or com­put­er whizzes as spir­i­tu­al­ly hol­low. Most of these aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­plines sim­ply don’t prompt or pro­mote spir­i­tu­al reflec­tion, he said.

Implic­it in there is the notion that stu­dents who don’t exhib­it signs of “spir­i­tu­al dis­tress” can be sup­posed to be “spir­i­tu­al­ly hol­low”. Inter­est­ing. I won­der how much of that is Astin’s real per­spectve and how much of that is the byprod­uct of the inter­view­er’s line of ques­tion­ing.

Also of note: Stu­dents who par­ty fre­quent­ly are more like­ly to stop attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices, and “spir­i­tu­al­ly com­mit­ted” stu­dents gen­er­al­ly earn high­er grades.

Stu­dents who score high on mea­sures of spir­i­tu­al com­mit­ment gen­er­al­ly are health­i­er, hap­pi­er and more involved in com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice.

Thanks to World Mag­a­zine blog for unearthing this link!