College helps maintain religiosity?

So, there's a large scale study of religiosity and education, with an article about it at the Inside Higher Ed website. The key figures: So, by and large, on average, religiosity decreases from your teenage years to young adulthood (I'm not certain of the exact ages covered). Interestingly, and probably counter to most folks' intuitions, the higher your educational attainment during this time, the LESS relgiosity declines.So, there's no evidence that college *itself* drives people to decreased religiosity/increased agnosticism or atheism. So, while educated people tend to be less religous, it doesn't seem to be caused by the education. At least, that's how I read this.Any ideas as to why religiosity would be relatively maintained by college, (or, equivalently, why a lack of college education would would tend to erode religiosity)? Alas, this second-hand report doesn't give much detail, but if I get my hands on the original report I'll see if there's important missing info.

If you find that people tend to be less religious the more educated they are, and the fall off in religion is lower amongst the college kids, then they must surely, as a group, already be less religious when they get to age eighteen.

Indeed, but that doesn't strike me as an explanation. Belief in God is lower among the educated, but it is still quite high. Certainly we aren't talking about floor effects explaining the trends in the OP. In a Harris poll among Americans: Fully half of college graduates have a strong belief in God. Lower, but not vastly lower, than those without any college (62%). Heck, at those levels there we're closer to getting ceiling effects (which would predict the opposite trend than that noted in the OP).Still, I do suspect the "real" reason has to do more with the make-up of the groups than with effects of college itself. Although that point itself is also interesting, as many people quite strongly believe that higher education impacts upon belief in God.Edited by Zhimbo, : No reason given.

Lots of it can be explained by simple facts of life.To get by without a shingle often means working two or even three jobs these days so those without a college education may simply not have time to attend, find that on their list of priorities that religion falls somewhat behind eating and that they have less and less in common with the folk in the suits.Increasing education often comes with increasing leisure, increasing security and increasing social contacts and responsibilities.

---

Aslan is not a Tame Lion

I've never had any opinion one way or the other whether higher education will get people away from religion. What I've been saying all along is that higher education will make you more likely to vote liberal. Just look at maps of election results county by county. For example, in the last presidential election, the United States was a red sea of Bush supporters with little blue islands that were major megalopolis and metropolitan religions and colleges and universities. In other words, too many hicks and hillbillies voted in the last presidential election...

---

We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current.

​

Disclaimer:

​

Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

​

He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

You bring up a good point - these questions are not about core beliefs, they're about church attendance and affiliation. "Importance of religion" could mean any number of things, I'd want to see what people were actually asked.

It must have some kind of relationship, merely because there's a measurable difference.What I was trying to say is that if the "college degree" group ends up less religious after finishing college, but the fall off during those college years is less than that of the other groups, then the fall off amongst that group must have been greater than the others during high school. They already arrive at college less religious, on average, than the rest.Loads of people question the beliefs of their parents (religious, political and others) during their teens. It's a natural rebel age!

Not necessarily. What we don't see is another variable in the mix: the amount of religiosity in the groups entering the different levels of education. If the more religious tended increasingly to stay away from higher education (while the top education levels were still being pursued by the originally less religious) they would be removing themselves from the higher education data and causing a false positive result.Enjoy.

---

Join the effort to unravel AIDS/HIV, unfold Proteomes, fight Cancer,
compare Fiocruz Genome and fight Muscular Dystrophy with Team EvC! (click)

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
RebelAAmericanOZen[Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

Did this study say whether people who were already atheist or agnostic were polled?

Right, the poll doesn't ask how religious a person was to start out with. Probably had a lot of atheists laughing when they asked if their church attendence had dropped. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.