Students’ Spiritual Quest

UCLA’s Higher Edu­ca­tion Research Insti­tute (HERI) released a study three years ago detail­ing the results of a “spir­i­tual quest” sur­vey they con­ducted. With a sam­ple size of 112,000+ stu­dents I believe these results can be extrap­o­lated to most, if not all, col­lege students.

The major­ity (76%) said they were search­ing for mean­ing and pur­pose in life and 74% said they were dis­cussing with friends the mean­ing and pur­pose of life.

Sub­stan­tial per­cent­ages rein­forced their per­sonal spir­i­tual quest when asked about life goals. Respon­dents con­sid­ered the fol­low­ing goals as either “impor­tant” or “very important”:

• Attain­ing wis­dom 77%
• Becom­ing a more lov­ing per­son 67%
• Seek­ing beauty in my life 54%
• Improv­ing the human con­di­tion 54%
• Attain­ing inner har­mony 46%
• Find­ing answers to mys­ter­ies of life 45%
• Devel­op­ing a mean­ing­ful phi­los­o­phy of life 42%

With the melt down in recent years of every aspect of life, from severe weather events to the col­lapse of finan­cial mar­kets world­wide, have col­lege stu­dents changed their perceptions?

This study is three years old. I’m curi­ous if your per­sonal phi­los­o­phy has changed and how you are find­ing your pur­pose in life.

Source: Spir­i­tual Life of Col­lege Stu­dents (Full report in PDF download.)

Related Posts:

• What is the Mean­ing of Life?
• Reap­pear­ance of the Christ
• Illu­mi­nat­ing Mankind

Tagged as: Man's Purpose in Life, Search for Meaning