Crisis In Catholic Higher Education

WASHINGTON — A new study on higher education concludes that there is no “secularizing trend among Catholic students attending Catholic colleges.”

The study, conducted by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) takes a fresh look at a 2003 study by the Cardinal Newman Society.

The CARA study was presented at a meeting of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) in Washington in early February.

Authored by CARA’s Mark Gray and Melissa Cidade, it used data published by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA, as did the Cardinal Newman Society study.

One finding: 31% of students changing their attitude about abortion move away from Church teaching while 16% move toward it, meaning a net loss of 15%.

Patrick Reilly, president of the Cardinal Newman Society, still believes there is a crisis in Catholic higher education. “This is worse news than anything we’ve seen yet,” he said, “because not only does it show significant declines in faith practice and beliefs at Catholic colleges, but the additional analysis CARA performed finds that attending a Catholic college in itself has no significant impact on students’ faith.”

Read it all here.