Inside Higher Ed :: Not So Godless After All

A very interesting survey from the Social Science Research Council (“The survey was conducted and analyzed by two sociologists, Neil Gross of Harvard University and Solon Simmons of George Mason University”) reported by IHE today.

Listen to many critics of higher education, and you would think that faith had been long ago banished from the quad – or at least all those quads not at places like Notre Dame or Liberty or Yeshiva.

My complaint with this? In my experience it is also many staunch supporters of higher ed who believe (hope?) that faith has long been banished from the quad. I think many faculty will be disturbed by these results. Here is the breakdown of the survey provided in the article:

Professors and Belief in God

Positions of Belief

% of Professors

I don’t believe in God.

10.0%

I don’t know whether there is a God and I don’t believe there is any way to find out.

13.4%

I don’t believe in a personal God, but I do believe in a Higher Power of some kind.

19.6%

I find myself believing in God some of the time, but not at others.

4.4%

While I have my doubts, I feel that I do believe in God.

16.9%

I know God really exists and I have no doubts about it.

35.7%

There are some very interesting tidbits in this. Accountants are the most skeptical of God’s existence (63%) and perhaps less surprising, “professors are most likely to be atheists or agnostics at elite doctoral institutions (37 percent) and less likely to be non-believers at community colleges (15 percent).” I wonder what Community College Dean will make of this study.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

One thought on “Inside Higher Ed :: Not So Godless After All”