How College May Actually Limit Students’ Exposure to Different Religions

A commonly accepted narrative is that students are exposed to diverse religious perspectives for the first time while in college. A new study says that the opposite may be true.

Students are engaging with other students of diverse religious backgrounds before college, but after their first year, their engagement is dropping, the study found.

First-year students came to college expecting to have conversations, experiences, and engagements with people across the spectrum of religious diversity, but that didn’t happen, according to results from the Interfaith Diversity Experiences & Attitudes Longitudinal Survey, administered by Interfaith Youth Core, a national nonprofit group. They report having fewer conversations with peers about different worldviews or values, and discussing religious diversity less in courses with their professors than they did with teachers in high school.

A number of factors come into play as to why students’ engagement with religious diversity declined after their first year, said Alyssa N. Rockenbach, a lead researcher on the survey and a professor of higher education at North Carolina State University.

“Students develop close connections with their peers and teachers in high school that allow them to have a sense of comfort when discussing religion,” she said. “Imagine first-year students coming to their university for the first time. They don’t know many people on campus, and they may need some time to establish those connections to have that level of discussion about deeply personal issues around religion and spirituality.”

Another factor could be that they are learning to adjust to a new academic and social environment. Ms. Rockenbach said it may be that engaging in religious diversity is not as high on their priority list because of other first-year-of-college demands.

Although students are engaging less in conversation with students of different religious perspectives during their first year than before coming to college, they are studying with them more.

Before coming to college, 66 percent of students said, they studied with someone of a different religious or nonreligious perspective. During their first year, 79 percent did. “They’re studying together, but that doesn’t mean they’re engaging in friendship behaviors,” said Matthew J. Mayhew, a lead researcher on the survey and a professor of educational administration at Ohio State University.

Students are gravitating to other students with similar religious backgrounds for a sense of security, Ms. Rockenbach said. They might feel that they can be themselves and share more openly about their own worldviews if they find like-minded friends.

“The downside is that they are not challenged to develop positive attitudes toward others who have different worldviews than they do,” she said.

Missed Opportunities

Mr. Mayhew says the lack of conversation and interaction is also reflected in how students are perceiving the worldviews of other students. Students who are outside of minority religious identities typically perceive their campuses as less welcoming for those students. But the opposite is true for students within the identity.

“Hindus perceive more welcome on campus for Hindus compared to students who do not identify as Hindu,” the survey report says. “A similar pattern follows for Latter Day Saints/Mormons and Muslims. In general, these three groups are more optimistic about welcome for their own groups than are other students.”

Mr. Mayhew says it shows that if students are “not having dinner with peers, if they’re not having those conversations, then there’s a definite mismatch in how different folks are experiencing the campuses and what folks think other students are experiencing.”

Religious conversations could start in the classroom, Mr. Mayhew said, and professors set the tone for the discussion in those spaces.

When they first came to college, 43 percent of students said, they had discussed religious or spiritual topics with teachers earlier. After their first year, only 25 percent said they’d had those conversations with their professors.

Ms. Rockenbach said that not only might students not be comfortable with discussing religion with their professors because they have not developed a rapport, but also professors may be hesitant to bring it up in class.

“We know from previous research that was done at UCLA about faculty that they do have some concerns about broaching these topics with students in the classroom,” she said. “So it may be that opportunities are not being provided in the classroom to engage students on these topics.”

Their hesitation may be due to lack of training in knowing how to approach religious diversity or how to introduce the idea to students, Mr. Mayhew said.

Ms. Rockenbach agreed. “These are hot topics and definitely challenging to engage in the classroom,” she said. “When you don’t feel prepared to lead a discussion that students care very deeply about or are personally invested in, that may create challenges for faculty.”

When those conversations aren’t happening, students are losing out, Ms. Rockenbach said.

“College represents an optimal point in someone’s life when they have the opportunity to get to know people who have very different perspectives and worldviews than they do,” she said. “We are missing an important opportunity if we’re not harnessing that energy within the higher-education environment to help student make those connections.”

Ms. Rockenbach and Mr. Mayhew will return to the field to collect more information on students’ interactions with religion after their senior year in 2019.

“We may see that over time, as their experiences normalize,” Ms. Rockenbach said, “that they are able to have more religious-diversity engagement the longer that they’re in college.”