Losing My Religion / Sunday Education Section /NY Times Nov.1

Majoring in the humanities and social sciences puts a damper on religiosity. Thank (or blame) postmodernism, the staple of humanities classes, with its notions of relative truth(opposed to religion's absolute truth) and questioning authority. "These are arguments that students find persuasive, says Miles Kimball, an economics professor at the University of Michigan. He and three colleagues analyzed data on the religous attitudes and observance of some 26,000 students across the country over six years.

How important do students think religion is in their lives? For scale, Miles Kimball says, if the difference between the religiosity of people living in the Bible Belt and those in the rest of the country equals 100, then the effect of majoring in a particular subject would be:

-47 Social Science
-28 Humanities
-24 Physical Science/Math
-14 Engineering
-13 Biology
0 No College
+2 Business
+10 Other
+16 Vocational
+23 Education