{"id":378,"date":"2007-12-20T15:05:15","date_gmt":"2007-12-20T15:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i.php"},"modified":"2007-12-20T15:05:15","modified_gmt":"2007-12-20T15:05:15","slug":"students-spiritual-interests-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i","title":{"rendered":"Students&#8217; Spiritual Interests Increase on Campus, Even Without Worship"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Adelle M. Banks<br \/>\nReligion News Service<\/strong><br \/>\nThough college students&#8217; attendance at worship services declines, their interest in spiritual matters grows during their time on campus, a new UCLA study shows.<br \/>\nUCLA&#8217;s Higher Education Research Institute compared the views of students who were freshmen in the fall of 2004 with the same students&#8217; thoughts in the spring of 2007, when they were juniors.<br \/>\nThe survey of more than 14,000 students found that more than 50 percent of students considered &#8220;integrating spirituality into my life&#8221; very important or essential in 2007, an increase of almost 10 percentage points from 2004.<br \/>\nLikewise more students thought &#8220;developing a meaningful philosophy of life&#8221; was essential or very important.<br \/>\nWhile their spiritual interests increased, their worship attendance did not.<br \/>\nSlightly more than half the students said they attended services in college at about the same rate as they attended them in high school.<br \/>\nAlmost 40 percent, however, said they worshipped less frequently. Seven percent said they worshipped more.<br \/>\nResearchers also concluded that an increasing percentage of students had an &#8220;ecumenical worldview.&#8221; In 2004, 42 percent said they endorsed &#8220;improving my understanding of other countries and cultures;&#8221; 55 percent said the same in 2007.<br \/>\nStudents showed increasing agreement over time with the idea that nonreligious people can lead lives as moral as those of religious believers, with 90 percent approving the statement this year.<br \/>\n&#8220;The data suggest that college is influencing students in positive ways that will better prepare them for leadership roles in our global society,&#8221; said UCLA emeritus professor Alexander W. Astin, co-principal investigator for the research.<br \/>\nThe research included 14,527 students attending 136 U.S. colleges and universities. Its margin of error is between 1 and 2 percentage points.<br \/>\nThe project, which is in its fifth year, is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.<br \/>\n<em>Copyright 2007 Religion News Service.  All rights reserved.  No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service Though college students&#8217; attendance at worship services declines, their interest in spiritual matters grows during their time on campus, a new UCLA study shows. UCLA&#8217;s Higher Education Research Institute compared the views of students who were freshmen in the fall of 2004 with the same students&#8217; thoughts in&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Students&#039; Spiritual Interests Increase on Campus, Even Without Worship<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Students&#039; Spiritual Interests Increase on Campus, Even Without Worship\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service Though college students&#8217; attendance at worship services declines, their interest in spiritual matters grows during their time on campus, a new UCLA study shows. UCLA&#8217;s Higher Education Research Institute compared the views of students who were freshmen in the fall of 2004 with the same students&#8217; thoughts in&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-20T15:05:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"akornfeld\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Students' Spiritual Interests Increase on Campus, Even Without Worship","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Students' Spiritual Interests Increase on Campus, Even Without Worship","og_description":"By Adelle M. Banks Religion News Service Though college students&#8217; attendance at worship services declines, their interest in spiritual matters grows during their time on campus, a new UCLA study shows. UCLA&#8217;s Higher Education Research Institute compared the views of students who were freshmen in the fall of 2004 with the same students&#8217; thoughts in&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2007-12-20T15:05:15+00:00","author":"akornfeld","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i","name":"Students' Spiritual Interests Increase on Campus, Even Without Worship","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-20T15:05:15+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-20T15:05:15+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2007\/12\/students-spiritual-interests-i#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Students&#8217; Spiritual Interests Increase on Campus, Even Without Worship"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/da3acea0a48aaeb7e77474c2f29f849a","name":"akornfeld","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/dd2\/dd26f111fd1fab06b546769e3bf834f3x96.jpg","caption":"akornfeld"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/akornfeld"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}