{"id":521,"date":"2021-01-18T17:02:17","date_gmt":"2021-01-18T17:02:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/?p=521"},"modified":"2021-01-18T17:02:17","modified_gmt":"2021-01-18T17:02:17","slug":"college-freshmen-are-more-godless-than-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/18\/college-freshmen-are-more-godless-than-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"College Freshmen are More Godless Than Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the last 30 years, college students have become much less religious. The fraction who say they have no religious affiliation has more than tripled, from about 10% to 34%. And the fraction who say they have attended a religious service in the last year fell from more than 85% to 66%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve been following this trend for a while, using data from the CIRP Freshman Survey<\/a>, which has surveyed a large sample of entering college students since 1966.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most recently published data is from \u201c95,505 first-time, full-time freshmen entering 148 baccalaureate institutions\u201d in Fall 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, college students are not a representative sample of the U.S. population. Furthermore, as rates of college attendance have increased, they represent a different slice of the population over time. Nevertheless, surveying young adults over a long interval provides an early view of trends in the general population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Religious preference<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Among other questions, the Freshman Survey asks students to select their \u201ccurrent religious preference\u201d from a list of seventeen common religions, \u201cOther religion,\u201d \u201cAtheist\u201d, \u201cAgnostic\u201d, or \u201cNone.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The options \u201cAtheist\u201d and \u201cAgnostic\u201d were added in 2015.  For consistency over time, I compare the \u201cNones\u201d from previous years with the sum of \u201cNone\u201d, \u201cAtheist\u201d and \u201cAgnostic\u201d since 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following figure shows the fraction of Nones from 1969, when the question was added, to 2019, the most recent data available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Percentage of students with no religious preference from 1969 to 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The blue line shows data until 2015; the orange line shows data from 2015 through 2019. The gray line shows a quadratic fit. \u00a0The light gray region shows a 95% predictive interval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quadratic model continues to fit the data well and the most recent data point is above the trend line, which suggests that the \u201crise of the Nones\u201d is still accelerating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attendance<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The survey also asks students how often they \u201cattended a religious service\u201d in the last year. The choices are \u201cFrequently,\u201d \u201cOccasionally,\u201d and \u201cNot at all.\u201d Respondents are instructed to select \u201cOccasionally\u201d if they attended one or more times, so a wedding or a funeral would do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following figure shows the fraction of students who reported any religious attendance in the last year, starting in 1968. I discarded a data point from 1966 that seems unlikely to be correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Percentage of students who reported attending a religious service in the previous year.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

About 66% of incoming college students said they attended a religious service in the last year, an all-time low in the history of the survey, and down more than 20 percentage points from the peak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This curve is on trend, with no sign of slowing down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gender Gap<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Female students are more religious than male students. The following graph shows the gender gap over time, that is, the difference in percentages of male and female students with no religious affiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Difference in religious affiliation between male and female students.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The gender gap was growing until recently. It has shrunk in the last 3-4 years, but since it varies substantially from year to year, it is hard to rule out random variation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data Source<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The American Freshman: National Norms Fall 201<\/em>9
Stolzenberg, Aragon, Romo, Couch, McLennon, Eagan, and Kang,
Higher Education Research Institute, UCLA, June 2020<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This and all previous reports are available from the HERI publications page<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the last 30 years, college students have become much less religious. The fraction who say they have no religious affiliation has more than tripled, from about 10% to 34%. And the fraction who say they have attended a religious service in the last year fell from more than 85% to 66%. I\u2019ve been following this trend for a while, using data from the CIRP Freshman Survey, which has surveyed a large sample of entering college students since 1966. The most…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[81,22,21],"class_list":["post-521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atheism","tag-college","tag-religion"],"yoast_head":"\nCollege Freshmen are More Godless Than Ever - Probably Overthinking It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/18\/college-freshmen-are-more-godless-than-ever\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"College Freshmen are More Godless Than Ever - Probably Overthinking It\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In the last 30 years, college students have become much less religious. The fraction who say they have no religious affiliation has more than tripled, from about 10% to 34%. And the fraction who say they have attended a religious service in the last year fell from more than 85% to 66%. I\u2019ve been following this trend for a while, using data from the CIRP Freshman Survey, which has surveyed a large sample of entering college students since 1966. The most... 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The fraction who say they have no religious affiliation tripled, from about 10% to 30%. And the fraction who say they have attended a religious service in the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"college\"","block_context":{"text":"college","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/college\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/heri18.3-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/heri18.3-1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/heri18.3-1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/heri18.3-1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/heri18.3-1.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/heri18.3-1.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":227,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2019\/06\/18\/backsliding-on-the-path-to-godlessness\/","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":1},"title":"Backsliding on the path to godlessness","author":"AllenDowney","date":"June 18, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"In the last 30 years, college students have become much less religious. The fraction who say they have no religious affiliation tripled, from about 10% to 30%. And the fraction who say they have attended a religious service in the last year fell from 85% to 70%. I've been following\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"college\"","block_context":{"text":"college","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/college\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1320,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/29\/have-the-nones-leveled-off\/","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":2},"title":"Have the Nones Leveled Off?","author":"AllenDowney","date":"June 29, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Last month Ryan Burge published \"The Nones Have Hit a Ceiling\", using data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Study to show that the increase in the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has hit a plateau. Comparing the number of Atheists, Agnostics, and \"Nothing in Particular\" between 2020 and\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/heri.5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/heri.5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/heri.5.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":590,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2021\/05\/01\/simpsons-paradox-and-education\/","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":3},"title":"Simpson’s Paradox and Education","author":"AllenDowney","date":"May 1, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Is Simpson's paradox a mathematical curiosity or something that matters in practice? To answer this question, I'm searching the General Social Survey (GSS) for examples. Last week I published the first batch, examples where we group people by decade of birth and plot their opinions over time. In this article\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"general social survey\"","block_context":{"text":"general social survey","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/general-social-survey\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/libath_vs_year_by_degree.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/libath_vs_year_by_degree.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/libath_vs_year_by_degree.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":536,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/07\/berkson-goes-to-college\/","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":4},"title":"Berkson Goes to College","author":"AllenDowney","date":"April 7, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"This article is like a pre-excerpt from my forthcoming book, Probably Overthinking It: a revised version of this article make up part of the chapter about Berkson's paradox. If you would like to get an occasional update about the book, please join my mailing list. Suppose one day you visit\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/berkson5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/berkson5.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/berkson5.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/04\/berkson5.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]},{"id":373,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/05\/young-christians-are-less-religious-than-the-previous-generation\/","url_meta":{"origin":521,"position":5},"title":"Young Christians are less religious than the previous generation","author":"AllenDowney","date":"January 5, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the first in a series of articles where I use data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to explore Differences in beliefs and attitudes between Christians and people with no religious affiliation (\"Nones\"),Generational differences between younger and older Christians, andGenerational differences between younger and older Nones. On several\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"age period cohort analysis\"","block_context":{"text":"age period cohort analysis","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/age-period-cohort-analysis\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation_by_year.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation_by_year.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation_by_year.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation_by_year.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":525,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521\/revisions\/525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}