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Theology majors marry each other a lot, but business majors don’t
- Alex3917 9y agoThis makes sense, given that if you major in theology you are likely going to a small unaccredited school with only a few dozen or a few hundred students from very similar backgrounds. I'd expect that if you looked at religious studies majors instead, you wouldn't see any especially unusual marriage patterns.
- philwelch 9y agoPlus, you're more likely to have strong religious beliefs, and most religions promote marriage.
- chrisseaton 9y ago> Plus, you're more likely to have strong religious beliefs, and most religions promote marriage. Theology is the study of religion. You don't need to believe in religion to study it. I knew several theology students at university and none of them were religious. Do you think people studying Greek mythology are more likely to believe in Zeus?
- badhombres 9y agoThey weren't saying all people who study theology were religious, just more likely to be religious. Priests generally do need a bachelors degree and it would make sense if they gravitated towards theology vs other degrees.
- sudhirj 9y agoThink you're referring to religious studies / history of religion / philosophy courses? 'Theology' studies usually refers to the courses taken to become practitioners of a particular religion - it's what you study to become a pastor / priest or the equivalent in your chosen religion.
- gaius 9y agoTheology' studies usually refers to the courses taken to become practitioners of a particular religion That’s “Divinity” you’re thinking of
- lgregg 9y agoIt’s very unlikely you’d become a pastor with just a BA. The only normal cases where that happens is in rural churches, or if one goes back to their local church. Otherwise, the trend and job requirements for an Associate/Assistant Pastor is a Masters of Divinity or the pursuant of during employement. Theology is just looking at the Study of God, god, or gods, depending on your schools background and faculty. If you go to an interfaith program like Harvard’s it is very different from going to study theology at Liberty University. Masters of Divinity is the study of the actual execution of the faith organization, that be a Church if Christian, Temple if Buddhist and etc. That’s covers from Theology, Nonprofit taxes, Counseling, and more.
- Alex3917 9y ago> Theology is the study of religion. You may be thinking of religious studies. Theology is basically the study of Christian beliefs about Christianity. Or more generally the study of what people within a specific religion believe / practice. Religious studies is an actual academic field, theology is not.
- chrisseaton 9y agoI don't think so. The theology department at my university studies 'Buddhism, Christian history and theology, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Chinese and Japanese religions'. It's not affiliated with any religion, and as I said, my friends studying it weren't even religious themselves.
- cfadvan 9y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology#As_an_academic_discipline_in_its_own_right https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theology#As_an_academic_disc... In some contexts, scholars pursue theology as an academic discipline without formal affiliation to any particular church (though members of staff may well have affiliations to churches), and without focussing on ministerial training. In some contemporary contexts, a distinction is made between theology, which is seen as involving some level of commitment to the claims of the religious tradition being studied, and religious studies, which by contrast is normally seen as requiring that the question of the truth or falsehood of the religious traditions studied be kept outside its field. Religious studies involves the study of historical or contemporary practices or of those traditions' ideas using intellectual tools and frameworks that are not themselves specifically tied to any religious tradition and that are normally understood to be neutral or secular. There is a difference between theology and religious studies.
- chrisseaton 9y agoDo you think a leading university theology department is confused about what theology is?
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- buckminster 9y agoIf a sizable group of people believed in Zeus I would expect them to be overrepresented in the study of Greek mythology.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- wjossey 9y agoI’ll echo what another poster said. I was one class shy of a religion minor in college, but I’m an atheist (although was raised catholic). To this day, I spend a lot of time learning more about theology, and it’s entirely independent of my personal religious opinions. I’m not sure how strongly correlated the study of theology is with personal strong identification of a particular theological belief.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- gowld 9y agoEveryone is the study was married, so this comment makes no sense. https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-major-matching.jpg https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-...
- patmcguire 9y agoIt still does, if it means they get married earlier, at the immediate college/post-college time.
- philwelch 9y ago...to people who they spent a lot of time with and shared their basic religious views with, i.e. fellow theology majors.
- madengr 9y agoWould be more interesting to see infidelity statistics.
- presidentender 9y agoPut another way, the rest of us ostracize theology as a discipline, leaving its students to associate primarily with one another.
- mieseratte 9y ago> Put another way, the rest of us ostracize theology as a discipline, leaving its students to associate primarily with one another. That's unnecessarily harsh and probably wrong.
- whatshisface 9y agoTheology is not present in universities, religious studies is (edit: by theology I meant the study of God, not the study of religion: that's not quite right as you can see in my replies). Theology is taught in special schools, because it fundamentally does not work the same way as other studies. In Universities, there is an expectation that no specific category of ideas should be preferred above any other unless it beats out its competition on the grounds of convincingness or support by evidence. Learning new theology is quite close to learning anything else, but research is very different! In fact, there's also a little gap inside the universities, between people who primarily rely on evidence (the sciences), and people who primarily rely on being convinced (the humanities). So you've got faith, evidence, and convincingness, and their followers find it difficult to talk.
- foldr 9y agoThere are lots of universities with theology departments. You can just google this.
- whatshisface 9y agoThere are religious studies departments named theology, and there are religious schools that also teach enough other classes to be considered universities, but no secular University would have a department that, say, gave you a Minister's license for a specific denomination. (That's because it would require you to focus on things too specific.) I am implicitly separating "the study of human religion" from "the study of this, true, specific religion" in choosing words for religious studies and theology.
- austincheney 9y agoI have a cousin who majored in theology at Baylor. I don't see the correlation between school size and choice of major.
- aje403 9y agoWhile you don't personally see the correlation due to your cousin, a statistician with data may ( probably for certain majors more than others )
- gowld 9y agoThe statisticians found no correlation. Only the armchair pseudoscientists of HN are making up claims of correlations without any data.
- aje403 9y agoI think the claim is stated as a conjecture. The linked article is not studying what you're saying, can you provide a link proving that there is no correlation between major and school size (ideally bucketed into a log scale instead of a blind regression or something like that)?
- jasode 9y ago>with only a few dozen or a few hundred students I think even possibly more of a contributor than quantity is "theology major" is a much bigger part of a person's self-identity than "business major". The "business major" (like "communications major") often acts as a neutral default for "I don't know what I really want to do with my life but I still need to get my 4-year piece of paper."
- abakker 9y agoThere are plenty of accredited schools that teach theology. I’m not sure that accreditation is the issue.
- gowld 9y agoThis comment is prejudiced and incorrect in every possible way. The next highest majors are Agriculture and then Architecture. How does that fit into your just-so-story? Philosophy/ReligiousStudies is the 8th most extreme outlier, right after Liberal Arts. Further, the article isn't about majors of students getting married, it's about majors of graduates getting married.
- Para2016 9y agoI know right!? He's so offensive! OMG!!!
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- marchenko 9y agoI wonder if there is a degree of separation from other students influencing the homogamy here: theology is often taught in a separate school of Divinity (eg Harvard), and at least some large universities have separate schools of Agriculture and Architecture ( eg Cornell).
- Alex3917 9y agoI did my undergrad in the Cornell ag school. In practice it just meant having one class a semester in a different building. There wasn't any meaningful impact on my social life, other than becoming unusually proficient at identifying mushrooms. If you go through a super intensive program like architecture or medical school then that's going to have a huge impact on your life, but whether or not that program is in its own school probably doesn't matter.
- tlb 9y agoThe label on the graph is "Theology/ReligVoc", which suggests it includes religious studies majors.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- Alex3917 9y agoI think ReligVoc is training to become a rabbi or minister or whatever. I haven't read the methodology of the actual survey, but I have a hard time believing that many religious studies majors would self-categorize themselves into the theology category rather than just checking off liberal arts or whatever.
- tlb 8y agoOK, I am persuaded to your interpretation.
- cthalupa 9y agoReligious Vocation, as in becoming a preacher or otherwise involved in proselytizing as a vocation.
- cafard 9y agoThe two people I know who teach theology teach at an accredited (Jesuit) university with about eight thousand students. Now, as it happens, one of them is a nun, so she isn't marrying anybody. Not sure about the spouse of the other, but they met well after he had tenure.
- psyc 9y agoI didn't notice any control for whether the couples went to the same school. It's a well worn trope within Christian circles that people go to christian colleges to find a spouse.
- compiler-guy 9y agoIt is a well-worn trope, but it's not just within christian colleges. I've seen it at several universities that have nothing to do with religious schools. Even then, I think a lot of that is just observational bias from the life situation of people in their early twenties, which is when people often start to settle down. So the most inclined to settle down just happen to be in college.
- Qw3r7 9y agoNever bring business home.
- mfoy_ 9y agoWould be nice if the charts were legible...
- fasj82 9y agohttps://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-major-matching.jpg https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-... https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-matching-which-bas-marry-down.jpg https://familyinequality.files.wordpress.com/2018/04/spouse-...
- beamatronic 9y agoThey have a religious experience with each other
- fvrghl 9y agoHere is an interactive version: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/
- awat 9y agoI wonder if it has anything to do with mutual feelings about pre-martial abstinence.
- kristianc 9y agoAnecdata, but in my year at Oxford I heard stories about people going to Theology drinks with one eye on meeting potential life partners.
- notadoc 9y agoThere's also the very old corny joke that many people attend college to get their "MRS" or "MR" degree. But there is some truth to it since many partners meet in college, if not at a job requiring a comparable educational background.
- compiler-guy 9y agoIs their any college social activity that doesn't involve at least a little scoping out potential partners? That's what college-age people do.
- AimHere 9y agoI'd like to see whether there's a correlation here between gender imbalance in the particular subject and the marriage rate. I suspect theology is a heavily male-dominated subject, since a large number of the associated careers are either formally male-only or traditionally male-dominated. I'm wondering if this might be a case where the men outnumber women so much that a high proportion of the women in the field can easily find suitable men to pair off with without going further than their college. Checking whether other male-dominated subjects have similarly high intra-major marriage rates would test this(I don't know what they are, offhand, but I suspect a lot of STEM subjects might be there), and also doing the gender-reversed study (where it goes by the first marriage of the husband) might get similar results with more female-heavy subjects.
- gowld 9y agoThe article is about graduates, not students, so this comment bears no relation to any of the relevant facs.
- AimHere 9y agoWouldn't married graduates be disproportionately likely to initially meet each other as students?
- daveFNbuck 9y agoUnless graduates suddenly have their genders reassigned to balance the ratio in their field, this is still relevant. It's not a coincidence that male-dominated fields draw workers from male-dominated majors.
- digaozao 9y agoIt seems to fit my impression too. But it feels like for STEM this would apply to women. Most of my girl colleagues from college are married to classmates or other engineers. For men, they usually are married with women from other areas.
- lliamander 9y agoI can't seem to find any hard numbers at the moment, but I believe that the gender ratio for theology is fairly close to even (or, at least quite a bit closer than engineering or other male-dominated disciplines). Keep in mind that, while there are variations among the individual majors, but in general women tend to be over-represented in the humanities. Also, relatively few humanities majors actually end up working in a discipline that requires their major.
- xapata 9y agoLooks not too different from random. Low effect size, if anything.
- pathsjs 9y agoAlso, mathematicians! I don't have precise statistics, but anectodally when I was in my (under)graduate years it seemed like every mathematician was dating another one, unlike what I saw happen in other faculties
- bradlys 9y agoOpposite of my experience. Seemed like every math major was single.
- bitL 9y agoTwo predators together doesn't work, one has to work and yield.
- highdesertmuse 9y agoTheology majors may represent a greater proportion of believers in pre-marital sexual abstinance than do business majors, therefore weighting the odds in favor of marriage.
- devy 9y agoMarriage is more than sexual abstinance though. Commitment, friendship, shared passion and life interests are the biggest bullet points for me.
- lawlessone 9y agoI think they mean theology majors are more like to value premarital abstinence. And since most people religious or not still have urges people that value premarital abstinence will probably get married sooner.
- jacquesm 8y ago> Marriage is more than sexual abstinance though. I don't think that was what you wanted to write.
- kartan 9y ago> Theology majors may represent a greater proportion of believers in pre-marital sexual abstinance than do business majors Or maybe Theology majors have a higher pregnancy rate and "need" to marry more often. ;) Any theory is as good as any other without more data or a way to test it.
- mythrwy 9y agoI don't believe you need a massive set of data to reason that people who study theology are more likely to be religiously inclined though. So I'd say grandparents theory appears more likely.
- tanderson92 9y agoparent's post relies on that same reasoning, if you read it closely and with a bit of sarcasm. ;)
- djhaskin987 9y ago"Computer/Info Sci" was one of the few columns with mostly-red (fewer marriages). I guess we don't get out that much ;)
- Liquid_Fire 9y agoMostly red does not mean fewer marriages, since the table only shows the ratios for people who married.
- devonkim 9y agoFor a similar chart (that is potentially even harder to read and visualize somehow) this came out a couple years ago wrt people actually in certain occupations rather than for graduates in certain disciplines. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/
- phd514 9y agoThis is not surprising to me as I expect that the average pair of theology majors has more in common from the perspective of worldview and values, important things to share with a spouse, than the average pair of business majors.
- vanderZwan 9y agoSimilarly but subtly different: you can also look at things that matter to people that are more or less common. Theology majors probably have more uncommon important values than business majors do. So it should be much easier to find a non-business major with matching values for business majors, than it is for non-theology majors and theology majors
- dale14 9y agoBusiness majors have a lot of sexual relations and are more "distracted" by what the (meat) market has to offer. Sad but true.
- josc 9y agoSpot on! Up.
- emodendroket 9y agoAlright but these people are all married
- danielvf 9y agoThis could very well just be from the small numbers in the survey and group. In 2016, 1,920,718 people graduated with a BA in the USA. Of those 9,800 were theology majors. The survey data used only covered roughly 26,000 people, which would give us an expected 131 theology majors. 31% of those, or forty, married each other, giving us only twenty surveyed theology-theology marriages over an eight year period. And there were even fewer Architecture graduates and marriages.
- JadeNB 9y agoSeveral of the current top comments (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941770 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941603 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16941307) explain why this makes sense. I very much appreciate the parent's explanation of why, however sensible it is, one might be sceptical of this result. From my perspective, the point is that it's often very easy to come up with a post hoc explanation of why the effect you see is the one you would have expected; and, had the numbers come out the other way, there probably would have been just as many people who could explain why that was the expected outcome. The power of statistics is that it abstracts away from what should be or what we'd expect to what is, whether it is intuitive or non-. The price paid for this power is that it's very easy to ask questions that seem reasonable but aren't, so that one gets an answer to a precisely defined, rigorous question but misinterprets it as an answer to a possibly ill defined, less rigorous question; and that, to me, is what the parent comment is forcing us to remember.
- notadoc 9y agoThe Bloomberg interactive guide is interesting. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/ https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/ This statement is also interesting and I find it to be an accurate representation of most relationships that I'm aware of: > High-earning women (doctors, lawyers) tend to pair up with their economic equals, while middle- and lower-tier women often marry up. In other words, female CEOs tend to marry other CEOs; male CEOs are OK marrying their secretaries.
- josc 9y agoBusiness majors: why marry when you can have sex? Theology majors: they have different values.
- mainliningfbs 9y agoWhat a surprise, people who believe in magic also think marriage is a good idea.
- sctb 8y agoThis kind of trolling doesn't belong here and will get your account banned. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- klochner 9y agoBusiness Majors don't, but MBAs do. Business majors want to focus on their career, MBAs are mostly there and ready to settle down.
- chokma 9y agoOne of the reasons may be better job prospects. In Germany, for aspiring protestant pastors, you may share a position in a parish as a couple (both getting paid 50-75% of a full position, with the unspoken expectation of being available for 100%). Also the protestant churches are extremely territorial (a vestige of the medieval political landscape), so if you take your exam in Hamburg, you are not necessarily welcome in Munich. But you could marry a bavarian spouse who is also a pastor, which can be your entry ticket into the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Bavaria... edit: corrected name of ELCoB also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landeskirche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landeskirche
- tc313 8y agoAs a finance major, I don't really want my wife whispering "EBITDA" in my ear late at night, so I can believe this conjecture even if the article isn't convincing.
- JadeNB 8y ago> As a finance major, I don't really want my wife whispering "EBITDA" in my ear late at night, so I can believe this conjecture even if the article isn't convincing. This seems like an unfortunate argument, since, to the extent that it is valid, it is surely also an argument against anyone marrying you who doesn't long to hear financial jargon whispered in her ear at night.