As evidenced by a new UM study

Aug 3, 2009 22:51 GMT  ·  By
College attendance and majors have a large influence on students' religiosity levels
   College attendance and majors have a large influence on students' religiosity levels

Scientists at the University of Michigan have recently released a new research, detailing their belief on how college major options influence religious belief, and vice versa. Broadly, they have determined that those majoring in humanities and social sciences tend to become less religious than the average, whereas those with a major in education tend to become more so. A “steady” line was recorded in the case of those majoring in biology and physical sciences, the study also shows.

The new investigation relies on long-term data collected from the Monitoring the Future Study, which was conducted by the UM Institute for Social Research (ISR). It was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, and the paper accompanying it was released the week of July 27th by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

“Education majors are clearly safe havens for the religious. Highly religious people seem to prefer education majors, tend to stay in that major, and tend to become more religious by the time they graduate,” the co-author of the paper, UM economist Miles Kimball, says in regards to the study results. The data that Kimball and colleagues Colter Mitchell, Arland Thornton and Linda Young DeMarco analyzed came from 1976 to 1996 graduates, totalling about 26,200 individuals. College attendance during study years was also an important factor taken into account for the conclusion.

In their assessment of possible impacts college majors had on religiosity, the researchers selected the largely neutral business major. “We wanted a major that was culturally neutral and that attracted a large number of students. The content of most business courses does not touch on values,” Kimball explains. “There are important differences among the college majors in world views and overall philosophies of life. At the same time, students recognize to some degree the differences among majors and chose a major based, at least in part, on religiosity.”

“Our results suggest that it is Postmodernism, not Science, that is the bete noir of religiosity. One reason may be that the key ideas of Postmodernism are newer than the key scientific ideas that challenge religion. For example, religions have had 150 years to develop resistance or tolerance for the late 19th century idea of Evolution, but much less time to develop resistance or tolerance for the key ideas of Postmodernism, which gained great strength over the course of the 20th century,” the expert concludes.