This touches on a point I neglected to make in 2301 this week as we covered -- too briefly -- political socialization. College's biggest impact on students is argued to be less due to what professors tell them -- I can promise you students are quite inattentive -- than the dual impact of (1) a new set of peers composed of people with different views, and (2) the distance that students have with their families. The family can no longer keep their kids in line.
Perhaps this explains why some religious students become more secular in their outlooks when they move off to school:
To me, there are better explanations for the fact that "the more university education a person receives, the more likely he is to hold secular and left-wing views." One is that people who attend college leave home. That is to say, they leave their church, the community incentives to attend it, and the watchful eye of parents who get angry or make them feel guilty when they don't go to services or stray in their faith. Suddenly they're surrounded by dorm mates of different faiths or no faith at all. For many of these students, it turns out that their religious behavior was driven more by desire for community, or social and parental pressure, than by deeply held beliefs. Another reason education correlates with secularism is that secularists are more likely to seek advanced degrees, partly because they're more focused than their religious counterparts on career.
