According to a study conducted at the University of Californiain Los Angeles, colleges around the nation are doing little tosupport students’ growing interest in religion andspirituality.
The study, performed by UCLA professors Alexander Astin andHelen Astin of UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute,states that while 76 percent of students claim to be”searching for meaning and purpose in life,” only 55percent are satisfied with how their college experience hasaffected their spiritual growth.
The study indicates that professors and classroom procedures maybe at the root of this issue. According to statistics gleaned fromthe study’s spring 2003 survey of 3,680 students from 46higher education facilities, only 39 percent of students say thatnew ideas learned in the classroom have strengthened their beliefs.Sixty-two percent say that their professors never encourage them todiscuss religious or spiritual matters.
SMU’s Assistant Chaplain Judy Henneberger said that shebelieves these numbers accurately depict a trend in highereduaction, saying that it is “getting to be a new experiencethat students are bringing their spirituality into theclassroom.”
“We’ve kind of lost where it belongs in theacademy,” she said, speaking of spirituality. “Theinstitutions, the professors, are in a dilemma.”
Henneberger said that many professors may be reluctant toincorporate religious matters into their classes because there is aquestion of whether or not religion is relevant in the academicworld, and because professors are unsure of how to do so.
“How do you open the door to allow those kinds ofdiscussions?” she said. Henneberger has found that it’snot so much that professors don’t want to discuss religion,it’s that they don’t know how to fit spirituality andreligion into their class setting.
“I think it’s politics, too. … It would take areally astute professor to open up that Pandora’s Box”of religious discussion, she said.
SMU student Judah Epstein, president of the on-campus Jewishorganization SMU Hillel, agrees with Henneberger on why professorsseem unenthusiastic about religious discussion.
“Professors might not want to do that becausethere’s people of different backgrounds,” he said.”It might cause problems.”
Epstein also said that he thinks religious and spiritual mattersdo not have a place in all classrooms.
“It would depend on what classes you’retaking,” he said. “I’m an electrical engineeringmajor. If it came up in one of my classes, I’d wonder,‘Why are we discussing this?'”
However, UCLA professor Alexander Astin, who is also thedirector of HERI and a co-principal investigator for the study,argued in a press release that spirituality and religion are notonly relevant, but essential to a well-rounded liberal artsprogram.
“Higher education needs to explore how well it’smeeting the great traditions at the core of a liberal artseducation, grounded in the maxim, ‘knowthyself,'” he said.
Alexander Astin and Co-Principal Investigator Helen Astinrestated this idea in a column they wrote for the Nov. 29, 2003issue of The Dallas Morning News.
“While we academics can be justifiably proud of ouraccomplishments in the fields of science, medicine, technology, andcommerce, we have increasingly come to neglect the student’sinner development — the sphere of values and beliefs,emotional maturity, spirituality, and self-understanding,”they wrote.
However, some think that students should be the ones takingresponsibility for their own “inner development.”
“I think it’s really up to the students, … butyou’re limited as a student as to how much you can access.The chaplain’s office acts as a huge resource, “Sabeena Rahman, the president of SMU’s Muslim StudentAssociation, said.
Although she thinks that the Chaplain’s office “hasbeen great,” Rahman has some ideas that she thinks couldcreate a more supportive environment for student religious groups.She suggests a wider array of religion and foreign languageclasses, pointing out that in some instances, the two areintertwined. For example, Arabic is the language of the Koran, theholy book of Islam, she said.
“It would be good for students to actually take a religionclass,” Rahman said. The way the Perspectives requirement isarranged, it is possible to avoid doing so.
Rahman’s final suggestion is that the university build acenter specifically for religious organizations to meet. She saidthat finding meeting places can be a problem during busy times suchas homecoming.
Although Henneberger agrees that such a building, a”religious life center,” as she calls it, would serveas “a resource for the whole university,” she said,”That’s not on anybody’s radar screen exceptmine.”
Space allocation is a problem, but there isn’t much theuniversity can do, Henneberger said.
“There’s only so much space for groups tomeet,” she said. “And [religious organizations] have tocome under the same guidelines as other groups.”
In the meantime, HERI will administer a revised survey to 150colleges and universities during the fall 2004 semester. Thissurvey is part of a project called “Spirituality in HigherEducation: A National Study of College Students’ Search forMeaning and Purpose,” which is funded by a grant from theJohn Templeton Foundation.
