Does Tertiary Education Produce Religious Change?

Abstract

This study considers whether tertiary institutions have an impact on the religious orientation of students. While other studies have examined this question, they suffer from important methodological weaknesses which leave their interpretations open to question. By using a longitudinal research design with control groups, this study of 375 16-to 18-year-olds shows that tertiary institutions have no distinctive impact on student religious orientation. It is suggested that the lack of distinctive impact is partly because attending tertiary institutions has no distinctive impact on the reference groups of students.