Higher Education Identity

A crucial point in which many individuals start to battle questions of meaning are as young adults in college. The big questions of “what am I doing here, what’s my purpose in life, who am I, and what can I do to make the world a place of less pain and suffering?” are constantly on student’s minds as they transition into college and often a new identity. This is a common journey for young adults and it seems to have been forgotten that it’s often a journey that one cannot do alone. One emerging issue that appears in Higher Education is providing access to spiritual and religious services. Through their college careers, students are faced with internal struggles of identity and meaning. This can be hard to figure out on top of greater forces in their environment such as death, heartache, and adversity. It is important for students to have a set of morals and values to live by to keep focused and persevere through any speed bumps in their collegiate experience and then later on in their careers. …show more content…
One of the shifts through time was away from the religious groups that established many institutions and closer to a more secular education. It is important to understand that specific religious services and spaces are going to depend on the institution in which they reside. Components such as campus climate, mission, demographics, location, and classification of the institution will determine in which ways the campus body can be best served. This paper will look at how these factors influence religious and spiritual services in five institutions across the. After a brief review of the literature on religious and spiritual services in higher education an institutional comparative analysis will be done on these five different types of institutions through data from their websites and from conducted interviews with institutional