An interesting study reported on in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The study, Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students’ Inner Lives, is a longitudinal study of the religious and spiritual views of college students.

The key findings:

The authors use the term spirituality broadly, to mean people’s inner, subjective lives. They found that students’ level of spiritual quest, or seeking meaning and purpose in life, rose during college. By the second survey, eight in 10 students were at least “moderately” engaged in a spiritual quest. Students were more likely as juniors than as freshmen to say they wanted to develop a meaningful philosophy of life, seek beauty, become a more loving person, and attain inner harmony. …

And the authors found that students’ level of religious struggle, or questioning their beliefs, increased in college. However, their level of religious skepticism or religious commitment stayed about the same, even though their engagement in religion declined. Students also became less religiously conservative, measured by their responses to questions on issues like abortion and casual sex.

The full article is here