Friday, July 13, 2007

Most American academics are believers

Contrary to popular opinion, the majority of professors - even at elite schools - are religious believers, a new study shows. Accounting professors are the most religious among the top 20 bachelor's degree-granting disciplines, with 63% saying they believe in God. Overall, American professors are less religious than the general public, but a majority of academics do believe in God, the survey of about 1,500 professors found. A professor at Harvard University, Neil Gross, and a professor at George Mason University, Solon Simmons, conducted the survey.

A professor of religion at Barnard College, Randall Balmer, said the study helps to refute the notion that academics are almost universally atheist or agnostic. A research scholar at New York University's Center for Religion and Media, Jeff Sharlet, likewise said the idea that the ivory tower is detached from the main currents of religious life is as sound as believing that "The Beverly Hillbillies" is a fair representation of rural poverty. About accountants being so religious, Mr. Sharlet quipped, "The god is in the details."

The new research shows that mechanical engineers are those whom one is least likely to be seated next to at a church, mosque, or synagogue. Nearly 71% attended religious services once or twice a year or less. Psychology, communications, marketing, biology, and sociology professors follow, although the authors caution that some differences might reflect differing institutional locations of various disciplinary fields.

Mr. Balmer said he was surprised that biologists were among the disciplines that were most atheist and agnostic. Between 20% and 30% of professors overall termed themselves atheists or agnostics.

The survey also showed that faculty members at elite institutions are more secular than their counterparts at community colleges. Mr. Balmer said the apparently smaller number of religiously identified professors at elite institutions could possibly be explained by the abundance of religiously affiliated colleges throughout the country, many of which require some sort of religious affirmation.

Mr. Gross said the study shows that professors who are more oriented toward research tend to be less religious. "At elite doctoral-granting universities, nearly all professors are oriented first and foremost toward research," he said via e-mail. He said also the study showed that professors whose parents completed college tend to be somewhat less religious.

Mr. Gross said the only consistent disciplinary predictor of being less religious was being a social scientist. Mr. Gross said some sociologists have hypothesized that social scientists are less religious than other professors because they are more inclined to think of religion as a social phenomenon to be explained. Others believe, he said, that it is because social scientists want to establish themselves as "scientists" and therefore distance themselves from anything appearing unscientific.

In general, professors in applied fields tend to be more religious and answer most like members of the general population in terms of their social and political attitudes and characteristics, he said. After accounting professors, those most likely to profess belief in God are professors of elementary education, finance, marketing, art, and criminal justice.

Mr. Gross found that the closer to the research core of the university one gets, the less religious professors become, although, again, the majority still are religious believers. Mr. Sharlet said liberal arts professors are more likely than many others to be immersed in "Enlightenment assumptions."

Regarding researchers, Mr. Sharlet said a person would want his or her neurologist, for example, to be obsessed with scientific medical data. He said that the engagement of a neurologist or a political science professor to their work at a top college could tend to crowd out other concerns, such as spiritual ones.

Nevertheless, many elite institutions once originally served quasi-religious purposes such as training and educating clergy. But Mr. Balmer, who has a forthcoming book on how faith has shaped the presidency starting with President Kennedy, said places such as Harvard are never going to be the "nurseries of piety" that they were in the 17th century. At the same time, he said, there is a growing recognition that religion needs to be taken seriously as a cultural force as well as a source of motivation for human activity.

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Lagging US science education and science competitions

Last year, in his State of the Union speech, President Bush promised $5.9 billion this year for an American Competitiveness Initiative addressing, among other issues, the lack of trained scientists and researchers. Science fairs offer a rare flash of American technical brilliance. What can these kids, and the research programs that produce them, tell us about how to save American science? Perhaps if more teens could do their own scientific research, more would get interested in science and we might not lose our innovation edge.

The problem is how to get more kids involved. Science fair kids and their teachers point to the rock-star factor to explain why students stop competing in fairs after they leave middle school, where participation is often mandatory. Because science isn't seen as sexy, students don't always realize how cool research can be.

"We're very comfortable saying some kids are the best in sports, but we're not as comfortable singling out the kids who are really exceptional in academics," says science fair alumna Lisa Randall, a Harvard theoretical-physics professor who won the Westinghouse competition as a senior. Over the last 65 years, winners of that contest, including six Nobel laureates, have gone into science or medicine at a 70% rate.

But they're the exception. Hard-science degrees (biology, physics, the tough stuff) have been stuck at 12% of college degrees over the last 20 years, with engineering currently representing 5% of degrees, down from 11%. From 1980 to 2000, advanced degrees in science and engineering grew at 1.5% annually, not coming close to filling the 4.2% growth in science jobs during the same period. As we fall behind in science, other countries are happy to send their scientists to the U.S. for training.

Our kids are not taking those places in part because they're increasingly not being pushed to do proto-research in school. Educators finger the No Child Left Behind law and the move toward state science exams, which reward memorization, says Gerald Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association. "All the standardized testing leads schools away from encouraging the time and energy it takes to do independent research," says Michelle Glidden, director of science education at Science Service, which runs the three big international fairs. She surveys fairs with participation levels too low for their winners to qualify for ISEF and has found that teachers are too worn out by the demands of testing, and the challenges of understanding high-level student projects, to herd students into the fairs.

The enticements are there. ISEF hands out $4 million in cash and scholarships. The top finisher in Intel's (nasdaq: INTC - news - people ) Science Talent Search, the vaunted research-paper competition formerly sponsored by Westinghouse, gets a $100,000 scholarship; of 1,700 entrants, the 300 semifinalists win $1,000 apiece. At regional and state science fairs, winners get money from universities, companies and the military, as well as medals, trophies and ribbons for Mom's mantelpiece. While winners have traditionally come from New York and its Northeast neighbors, other states are gaining. Florida, Texas and Missouri all sent strong contingents to the big fairs in recent years, as did California and Oregon, where Intel's presence is helping spread the word since the tech giant began sponsoring ISEF and the Talent Search a few years ago.

Jose Manuel Otero realized that science was his goal in 1996, when he went to ISEF with a project on filtering diesel from water using charcoal that he made from leaves and grass. Otero, the son of Spanish immigrants who never finished high school, took first place in the Connecticut state fair and went on to the internationals, winning third place in his division. "I didn't know I wanted to be a scientist until I got to ISEF," he says.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there are mirrors of this site here and here.

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