Project Materials

THE EFFECT OF CAMPUS FELLOWSHIP ON ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE AMONG UNIVERSITY IN NIGERIA.

Chapter one

INTRODUCTION

Background Of Study

Campus religious organisations, often known as campus fellowships, have left their impact on universities and the students who attend them. To be sure, the relationship between religion and higher education is frequently strained.

While universities were formerly an extension of the general Protestant ethos that pervaded American culture in Nigeria during the colonial era, the rise of modernism in the academy undermined religious impacts on higher education as a whole (Marsden, 1994).

Campus ministry arose in reaction to the waning Protestant presence in universities as a means of effectively nurturing students in their faith while also providing a secure, supportive environment for them (Winnings, 1999).

On the contemporary landscape, spiritual topics have attracted the interest of some scholars and students, particularly with the rise of postmodernism (Love, 2000), but secular higher education—particularly the research university—has remained ambivalent about religion in general (Smith, 2001).

Even public institutions are not immune to spiritual impact, as many students’ inclinations towards faith and spirituality have become more visible on campuses of all types (Astin, Astin, Lindholm, Bryant, Szelényi, & Calderone, 2005).

Groups that focus heavily on recruitment and evangelism have become more visible on campuses, and their memberships have grown (Bryant, 2005; Carroll, 2002; Cherry, DeBerg, & Porterfield, 2001; Swidey, 2003).

These observations raise significant issues about the beliefs that constitute these groupings and how they affect students’ key college outcomes.

Jeynes (2002, 2003a) and Regnerus (2000) discovered that religiously dedicated urban youngsters outperformed their nonreligious peers on academic tests, even after controlling for socioeconomic background, race, and gender.

These findings from diverse studies were based on analytic procedures, meta-analyses, national databases, and qualitative methods. Specifically, religious pupils of colour outperformed their nonreligious counterparts.

Regnerus (2000) devised and evaluated a multilevel model of religious involvement and academic success at Metropolitan Abuja Public High School. He hypothesised that: