Survey Show Professors Have Faith

Four out of five college professors across the nation consider themselves “spiritual,” according to a report released yesterday, countering the popular perception that college campuses are predominantly secular.

The Higher Education Research Institute at University of California at Los Angeles surveyed 40,670 faculty at 421 colleges and universities nationwide on their views about religion and spirituality.

Jennifer A. Lindholm, director of the project, said she was surprised by the results. “I wasn’t sure what we would find,” she said. “I would not have guessed [the number of professors identifying as spiritual] would be quite that high, perhaps because of stereotypical notions that professors are solely academically motivated.”

Other academics, however, said the results were not unexpected.

“I’m not really surprised at any of the numbers. That’s my general impression when I meet faculty members,” said Harvey G. Cox Jr., Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard. “I would say, yes, four out of five have some kind of spiritual orientation.”

The survey is part of an ongoing, national project investigating the development of spirituality in undergraduates during their college careers, and the influence professors have on their students.

This part of the study, entitled “Spirituality and the Professoriate,” focused on the spirituality of faculty and what role they believe spirituality should play in their universities.

According to the report, 81 percent of college professors identify as “a spiritual person.” Nearly two-thirds of faculty describe themselves as “a religious person,” either to “some extent” or “to a great extent.” Sixty-one percent said that they pray or meditate, and only 37 percent of professors said they are “not at all” religious.

Some students said that the study highlighted the significance of spirituality.

“[The report] shows that spirituality is definitely an important issue to students and faculty across the country,” President of the Harvard Interfaith Council Om L. Lala ’06 wrote in an e-mail.

“Though [Harvard] is a secular institution, as it should be, I think the issue of students’ spiritual growth is unnecessarily shied away from,” he wrote.

The study also broke down the data according to gender, race, and academic discipline.

Sixty-six percent of African-American faculty describe themselves as spiritual “to a great extent,” the report said, compared to 48 percent of Caucasian faculty and only 37 percent of Asian and Asian-American faculty.

Professors in the physical and biological sciences were less likely to believe that universities should concern themselves with students’ spiritual growth than professors in the humanities.

Slightly more women than men “integrate spirituality in [their] lives,” the survey found.