Old Higher Ed News

Study: College Age Students Losing Faith

A new study coming out of Georgetown University reports that many in the younger generation known as “millenials” are abandoning orthodoxy at an alarming rate.

The study focusing on 18-to-24-year-old Americans finds many rejecting religious doctrine, according to a joint survey from Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace& World Affairs and the Public Religion Research Institute.

According to the survey, around one quarter of respondents said they don’t identify with any religion. That’s more than twice the 11 percent raised in households without any particular faith, which means that many students are losing their faith during their college years.

The Catholic Church is among the hardest hit by young people losing their religion, according to the study’s executive summary.

This should not come as a surprise to anyone who follows the work of The Cardinal Newman Society. One of the reasons not discussed in the survey for so many young Catholics falling away from orthodoxy is that even many Catholic colleges and universities essentially encourage them to do so with the selection of dissent-spewing professors, by granting official status to groups with public positions at odds with Church teaching, and even with the selection of commencement speakers. The study indicates that Catholic students might have fallen away without attending these colleges, but a faithful Catholic education should nurture faith and bring students closer to God.

This study out of Georgetown highlights the dire need for faithful Catholic colleges like those in The Newman Guide to Choosing a Catholic College, which pride themselves on their adherence to the faith and treasure the privilege of passing that faith on to coming generations. 

In effect, the findings of this study from Georgetown may be partly attributable to institutions like…well, Georgetown. 

 What is the solution? Provide a grounding in more than empirical science and the failed project of modern philosophy (those who start from the mind as the origin of our reality). Schools need to teach liberal arts again, and to teach true science (empirical, philosophical and theological). It would also help if liturgies didn't include things like this instead of things like this: