Spirituality in College

latimes.com/news/local/la-me-beliefs-college-20101120,0,2997425.story

latimes.com

Spirituality finds a home at college

Students, searching for meaning in life, often enhance their inner lives, long-term study finds.

By Rick Rojas, Los Angeles Times
November 20, 2010

advertisement

....for many students, college is a time to develop spiritually in ways that can endure after they've finished school, a new long-term study has found.

"It kind of opens the student's mind," Alexander Astin, one of the study's authors and a professor emeritus of higher education at UCLA, said of the college experience. He called it a period "stimulated by exposure to new people and new ideas."
.... College is a safe haven in which they can explore their spirituality and challenge it.

The spirituality study, launched in 2003, was based on an initial survey of 112,000 American college freshmen, then a follow-up survey of more than 14,000 of the students after they completed their junior year at scores of colleges and universities nationwide. The researchers published their findings in a book released last month, "Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives." Astin's co-authors were his wife, Helen S. Astin, who is also a professor of higher education at UCLA, and Jennifer A. Lindholm, director of the university's Spirituality in Higher Education project.

The study found that many students struggled with their religious beliefs and became less certain of them during their college years.

It also found that many young people eschewed the rituals of organized religion but embraced what the researchers defined as the cornerstones of spirituality: asking the big, existential questions; working to improve one's community; and showing empathy toward other people.

"These spiritual qualities are critical and vital to many things a student does in college and after," Astin said.

The researchers also found that students who were more spiritual typically performed better academically, had stronger leadership skills, were more amiable and were generally more satisfied with college.


.....College courses on religious subjects help teach students how to read sacred texts with an intellectually curious eye.....


rick.rojas@latimes.com

Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times