<p>i found this article on edweek.org and thought some might find it interesting:</p>
<p>A recent study by researchers at the University of Michigan shows a decline in the religiosity of students who major in the humanities and social sciences, but a rise among those who study education and business.</p>
<p>Yet students who are highly religious tend to choose humanities and education majors at the outset, according to the study, which I first saw reported in the Christian Post. The results suggest "that there is something attractive about the humanities to students who are highly religious," the authors say. "This apparent attraction of the humanities is especially interesting," given the "dampening" effect on religious belief.</p>
<p>The results of the study are reported as a working paper of the National Bureau of Economic Research. I've linked to it, above.</p>
<p>Education majors, meanwhile, are "clearly a safe haven for the religious," the authors write. Highly religious people seem to prefer education majors, and they tend to stay in that major, their results show. "Highly religious people enter education majors, stay in them, and become more religious," they conclude</p>
<p>I see no link. I think that you can’t analyze any phenomenon regarding education majors unless you break it by gender. Highly religious women majoring in education may be doi g so because of their eventual prescribed role as wives/mothers, not because of any inherent reason.</p>
<p>I was an education major and have always been dismayed by the findings that, as a group, education majors have the lowest SAT scores.</p>
<p>^^^ Another interesting finding of the study was that biology and physical science majors remained about as religious as they were when they started college. The study’s authors speculate that “it is Postmodernism, not Science, that is the bete noir of religiosity.” I think that’s a stretch, though. More likely it is Secular Humanism, a broader and older phenomenon than Postmodernism and a pervasive view in the humanities, that is most at odds with religion. Interesting that Darwin, whose theory of evolution is foundational to the biological sciences, doesn’t seem to put a dent in religious faith. This will come as no surprise to non-fundamentalist Christians, but to some Christian fundamentalists and to some Darwinists it must surely be an unexpected finding. On the other hand, the study seemed to measure only the existence and degree of religious faith, not its content; so perhaps the substantive religious views of some biology majors evolved, so to speak, to allow them to reconcile science and religion. </p>
<p>[Study</a> shows how college major and religious faith affect each other](<a href=“http://www.ns.umich.edu/htdocs/releases/story.php?id=7256]Study”>Study shows how college major and religious faith affect each other | University of Michigan News)</p>