"But ignore the comparison between these two groups and just focus on the incredibly low levels of religious attendance among college students. About 60% of them attend a house of worship no more than twice a year. About one in ten are there at least once a week. College students are incredibly irreligious."
It seems like this quote could do a lot of work for religious college fundraisers and recruiters.
On the other hand, I never run into people who think about this systematically for their own children. This is despite the overwhelming evidence that retention is the primary factor in religious growth, that retention varies dramatically across different traditions, and despite the amount of hand-wringing and praying that parents do over the faith of their children.
For instance, I've looked and can't find a good study that compares parochial school attendance with religious adherence later in life.
The thing about religious attendance among college students is that it's always been low compared to whatever baseline exists in the non-college world at a given time. I think it's in large part because the college itself fills a lot of the non-spiritual roles that houses of worship fill for a lot of people.
I think there's also a lot of learning about self-discipline that happens in college, thrust into a new, unstructured environment away from your family. For example, while I had sports in high school to keep me in shape, I barely exercised in college until my senior year. At which point I learned how to incorporate regular exercise into my life in an adult manner, which has mostly stuck.
I also imagine this can be reflected in things like a lack of church attendance among the sort of kids that feel like they OUGHT to be going to church but just don't manage to. Though I imagine such kids mostly show up in the attendance categories below weekly but above "never" -- they're at least going to church when they're back home.
I think, especially among the Boomers and older generations, there's not even enough "hand-wringing and praying." A lot of parents seemed to take for granted that they would automatically pass down the faith. Though I suppose you could argue that this is generally how it worked in the past. But I don't think Millennial Christians feel that way. Yet like you, I haven't seen many good studies that approach this question systematically. A lot of anecdotes but not much good data.
It seems like the study of successfully transmitting religion to your children is something one could build a career around.
I live in Spain right now, and the reciprocal is true here—everyone is (formerly) Catholic, and many young people refer to being Catholic as just being "Christian." Most people here are only vaguely aware that Protestantism even exists.
I do Catholic campus ministry at an Ivy, and at least anecdotally it seems like among elite institutions there are a large number of converts to Catholicism. Do you have any data about conversions on college campuses broadly, or elite universities in particular?
We are in data collection for a project that could figure out if people changed religion at certain life stages. But we couldn't trace it back to college experiences, specifically.
I can't even begin to imagine how to undertake such a project. And even if I could, the budget for such data collection would be several million dollars at a minimum.
Bummer. Thanks for taking the time to explain, though. For those of us who are total laymen in the stats world, there is no sense of what kinds of numbers are available about what subjects. Thank you as always for your great work!
I've seen the same trend that you have at mid-level universities.
If the Catholic Church itself wanted to measure this, and was only concerned about conversions to Catholicism, it could probably pull some ballpark estimates together just by calling people like yourself and college-town priests.
It actually surprises me that nobody in the Catholic church is doing this currently. I assume that if they were doing this research you'd know.
There are 6 (yes, 6) institutions of higher learning (7, if you count the medical school one of the local hospitals started) within 10 miles of my northeast Ohio Episcopal Church.
And church leadership is pulling out it's collective (and not all gray) hair trying to figure out ways to get students interested in attending.
After looking at the data you provided (and remembering how many balls I was juggling when I went to a state college many decades ago), I have two comments:
1. Bless the kids that make it to church even 2 times a year (and that's probably during the summer when they are "home."
2. Expecting 18-24 year-olds to prioritize an activity that occurs in the morning, and probably a 20 minute ride (notice I didn't say drive, cuz they don't all have cars/bikes) on what is probably the only day of the week when they might have the time to do so is an exercise in my-way-or-no-way futility. However, providing non-denom activities on campus (at the stu ctr, library, frat/sor houses, etc) at times when they do have time might be a way to keep them connected to their faith.
Ryan, this is fascinating! Does the data subdivide people who identify as Christian into theological categories at all - does it note if people are more theologically conservative, liberal, or in between?
Because that last gap - that politically conservative Christians are vastly more likelier to attend church regularly - is really interesting. I assume that theological and political conservatism are statistically correlated, but I have a decent number of friends who are theologically conservative and politically liberal or mixed; I'd be interested to see what the data shows.
Interesting to an outside (British) as always. I wonder how similar the situation is here and in the rest of Europe.
My main thoughts on this though are on the ever-stronger ties between self-identifying as conservative and being religious in the US. I believe that younger people are, slowly, becoming less religious over time. If there is any kind of significant backlash to what is happening in US politics at the moment and people, especially younger people, move away from self-identified conservatism I do wonder if that will speed up the religious decline.
I think it's interesting how it always comes back to politics. It reminds me of how progressives prior to 2024 talked about how the "rise of the nones" would be an electoral boon from the Democratic Party -- when it was really just people who were already liberals dropping their religious affiliation (and the "nothing in particular" bucket is probably more Trumpy than the conventional wisdom lets on.)
Thanks for providing the link to the survey's sponsor. They appear to have an organizational agenda that is very much critical of colleges, particularly the selective ones. The religion data goes along for the ride. I tried to access my own alma mater and more recently that of my two children, a very selective one likely to be in their organizational cross-hairs with recent national publicity but could not find it. How data originates remains important.
The survey composite also did not select out institutions with religious sponsorship. I suspect different distributions in Jesuit institutions than Ivies and different still from MIT/Caltech STEM elites.
Since I contribute to the Jewish Centers of four universities, three highly selective, one my state university, they all remain vibrant. Shabbos morning attendance is a pittance of each university's Jewish population. In my own era, the same Orthodox kids attended each week. Not a whole lot different than my aging congregation fifty years later, still dominated by alumni of those selective institutions. The political distribution of those people is likely different than the Jewish cohort among the larger university. Attendance at Hillel on Shabbos morning, or even eating at the Kosher dining room captures a small subset of our population.
I think the message, though, that there is an intersection between Conservative political leanings and religious identification remains as valid in the university as it does every place else in 21st century America.
Really interesting breakdown. I'd also love to see an income breakdown of this data if that's something that FIRE included--Hank's Razor and all https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hank%27s%20razor. (Pardon the source but Vlogbrothers/📕An Absolutely Remarkable Thing📕creator Hank Green doesn't have an official site for this philosophical concept)
I love and am familiar with SIU-E but I think it differentiates itself from other "directional university in a flyover state" that it is in a suburb of a bigger city (St. Louis) and not in a city where it is among the largest employers (like Western IL or Eastern IL). I don't know what kind of impact that has on the data but it is something to consider.
A lot of students in my classroom at EIU seriously considered attending SIUE.
There are differences there, of course. The biggest one being that SIUE is not really a residential campus. They don't have a Greek life. But it's closer to the big city.
That's how I describe the difference to students. If you want to just get a degree and not really have the 'traditional' college experience - SIUE is a better option.
Not many SIUE grads have a strong sense of alumni loyalty.
"But ignore the comparison between these two groups and just focus on the incredibly low levels of religious attendance among college students. About 60% of them attend a house of worship no more than twice a year. About one in ten are there at least once a week. College students are incredibly irreligious."
It seems like this quote could do a lot of work for religious college fundraisers and recruiters.
On the other hand, I never run into people who think about this systematically for their own children. This is despite the overwhelming evidence that retention is the primary factor in religious growth, that retention varies dramatically across different traditions, and despite the amount of hand-wringing and praying that parents do over the faith of their children.
For instance, I've looked and can't find a good study that compares parochial school attendance with religious adherence later in life.
I find this baffling.
The thing about religious attendance among college students is that it's always been low compared to whatever baseline exists in the non-college world at a given time. I think it's in large part because the college itself fills a lot of the non-spiritual roles that houses of worship fill for a lot of people.
I can agree with that.
I think there's also a lot of learning about self-discipline that happens in college, thrust into a new, unstructured environment away from your family. For example, while I had sports in high school to keep me in shape, I barely exercised in college until my senior year. At which point I learned how to incorporate regular exercise into my life in an adult manner, which has mostly stuck.
I also imagine this can be reflected in things like a lack of church attendance among the sort of kids that feel like they OUGHT to be going to church but just don't manage to. Though I imagine such kids mostly show up in the attendance categories below weekly but above "never" -- they're at least going to church when they're back home.
I think, especially among the Boomers and older generations, there's not even enough "hand-wringing and praying." A lot of parents seemed to take for granted that they would automatically pass down the faith. Though I suppose you could argue that this is generally how it worked in the past. But I don't think Millennial Christians feel that way. Yet like you, I haven't seen many good studies that approach this question systematically. A lot of anecdotes but not much good data.
It seems like the study of successfully transmitting religion to your children is something one could build a career around.
I live in Spain right now, and the reciprocal is true here—everyone is (formerly) Catholic, and many young people refer to being Catholic as just being "Christian." Most people here are only vaguely aware that Protestantism even exists.
I do Catholic campus ministry at an Ivy, and at least anecdotally it seems like among elite institutions there are a large number of converts to Catholicism. Do you have any data about conversions on college campuses broadly, or elite universities in particular?
We are in data collection for a project that could figure out if people changed religion at certain life stages. But we couldn't trace it back to college experiences, specifically.
I can't even begin to imagine how to undertake such a project. And even if I could, the budget for such data collection would be several million dollars at a minimum.
Bummer. Thanks for taking the time to explain, though. For those of us who are total laymen in the stats world, there is no sense of what kinds of numbers are available about what subjects. Thank you as always for your great work!
I've seen the same trend that you have at mid-level universities.
If the Catholic Church itself wanted to measure this, and was only concerned about conversions to Catholicism, it could probably pull some ballpark estimates together just by calling people like yourself and college-town priests.
It actually surprises me that nobody in the Catholic church is doing this currently. I assume that if they were doing this research you'd know.
I loved this posting!!!!
There are 6 (yes, 6) institutions of higher learning (7, if you count the medical school one of the local hospitals started) within 10 miles of my northeast Ohio Episcopal Church.
And church leadership is pulling out it's collective (and not all gray) hair trying to figure out ways to get students interested in attending.
After looking at the data you provided (and remembering how many balls I was juggling when I went to a state college many decades ago), I have two comments:
1. Bless the kids that make it to church even 2 times a year (and that's probably during the summer when they are "home."
2. Expecting 18-24 year-olds to prioritize an activity that occurs in the morning, and probably a 20 minute ride (notice I didn't say drive, cuz they don't all have cars/bikes) on what is probably the only day of the week when they might have the time to do so is an exercise in my-way-or-no-way futility. However, providing non-denom activities on campus (at the stu ctr, library, frat/sor houses, etc) at times when they do have time might be a way to keep them connected to their faith.
Operative term: may.
Ryan, this is fascinating! Does the data subdivide people who identify as Christian into theological categories at all - does it note if people are more theologically conservative, liberal, or in between?
Because that last gap - that politically conservative Christians are vastly more likelier to attend church regularly - is really interesting. I assume that theological and political conservatism are statistically correlated, but I have a decent number of friends who are theologically conservative and politically liberal or mixed; I'd be interested to see what the data shows.
Interesting to an outside (British) as always. I wonder how similar the situation is here and in the rest of Europe.
My main thoughts on this though are on the ever-stronger ties between self-identifying as conservative and being religious in the US. I believe that younger people are, slowly, becoming less religious over time. If there is any kind of significant backlash to what is happening in US politics at the moment and people, especially younger people, move away from self-identified conservatism I do wonder if that will speed up the religious decline.
Could it be that the more selective criteria filter out, by default, more students who both are Protestant and also don’t know what a Protestant is?
I think it's interesting how it always comes back to politics. It reminds me of how progressives prior to 2024 talked about how the "rise of the nones" would be an electoral boon from the Democratic Party -- when it was really just people who were already liberals dropping their religious affiliation (and the "nothing in particular" bucket is probably more Trumpy than the conventional wisdom lets on.)
Thanks for providing the link to the survey's sponsor. They appear to have an organizational agenda that is very much critical of colleges, particularly the selective ones. The religion data goes along for the ride. I tried to access my own alma mater and more recently that of my two children, a very selective one likely to be in their organizational cross-hairs with recent national publicity but could not find it. How data originates remains important.
The survey composite also did not select out institutions with religious sponsorship. I suspect different distributions in Jesuit institutions than Ivies and different still from MIT/Caltech STEM elites.
Since I contribute to the Jewish Centers of four universities, three highly selective, one my state university, they all remain vibrant. Shabbos morning attendance is a pittance of each university's Jewish population. In my own era, the same Orthodox kids attended each week. Not a whole lot different than my aging congregation fifty years later, still dominated by alumni of those selective institutions. The political distribution of those people is likely different than the Jewish cohort among the larger university. Attendance at Hillel on Shabbos morning, or even eating at the Kosher dining room captures a small subset of our population.
I think the message, though, that there is an intersection between Conservative political leanings and religious identification remains as valid in the university as it does every place else in 21st century America.
Really interesting breakdown. I'd also love to see an income breakdown of this data if that's something that FIRE included--Hank's Razor and all https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Hank%27s%20razor. (Pardon the source but Vlogbrothers/📕An Absolutely Remarkable Thing📕creator Hank Green doesn't have an official site for this philosophical concept)
I love and am familiar with SIU-E but I think it differentiates itself from other "directional university in a flyover state" that it is in a suburb of a bigger city (St. Louis) and not in a city where it is among the largest employers (like Western IL or Eastern IL). I don't know what kind of impact that has on the data but it is something to consider.
A lot of students in my classroom at EIU seriously considered attending SIUE.
There are differences there, of course. The biggest one being that SIUE is not really a residential campus. They don't have a Greek life. But it's closer to the big city.
That's how I describe the difference to students. If you want to just get a degree and not really have the 'traditional' college experience - SIUE is a better option.
Not many SIUE grads have a strong sense of alumni loyalty.