Our hosts at First Things have asked me to pass this request along to our readers:
In the Fall of 2010, for the first time ever, First Things will release its own college rankings and guide. Picking the right college is a difficult and trying process, especially for parents and students concerned not only with academic quality but with spiritual and religious formation.
Among the plethora of college guides and rankings, none offers students andparents adequate insight into how schools stack up in relation to matters of faith, religious practice, religious and political bias in the classroom, support for religious groups, and the relations of faith to the actual currents in contemporary student life.
In preparing this issue, First Things has been conducting ground-breaking research, and now were opening it up to our readers. The Students of Faith Survey, for current students and recent graduates, will help us polish our research on the religious currents in academia today. It can be found at:
If youre a member of the classes of 2010 to 2013, please fill out the form. If not, please send the link to to your college age children, acquaintances, recent grads, and children of your friends. If you are a college minister, chaplain, or have any organizational relation to college students and recent graduates, we’d be grateful if you would pass this message on to them and encourage them to participate.
The more responses we get, and the wider the diversity of students and schools represented, the more helpful will be the information we can provide. Help us learn about what it is really like in academia for students of faith, so that we can help future classes of college students work through one of the most important decisions in their lives.