The College Fix

Senior pre-natural science major Ann O’Brien came to college searching for something.

Her sophomore year she joined a Newman Center intramural softball team, and she said she felt that she had finally found a missing piece.

“There were three girls on my team who were living their faith and illuminated a fullness of life and I knew they had what I was searching for,” O’Brien said.

In the years after, O’Brien became very active in the campus Roman Catholic community. Although several students share similar stories, it was a common misconception that higher education actually weakened religious ties, until recently.

Research conducted by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Philip Schwadel, associate professor of sociology, has come to a somewhat surprising conclusion in the debate regarding whether higher education is detrimental to religious dedication.

Schwadel’s research is based on a random sample of data taken from American adults. He also used cross-sectional data — data from the same time period — to compare people with different levels of education.

“The results showed mixed effects of education on religious ties,” Schwadel said. “More years of schooling are actually positively associated with attending religious services and more-educated Americans are far less likely to say that there is truth in only one religion.”

Read the full story at the Daily Nebraskan.

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