be sure to check out the menu when you're considering universities

When I recall my Cedarville years, I don't think too kindly about the food eaten in the cafeteria. Most of it was palatable, but some of it - shepherds pie in particular - brings back horrible memories. The steaks were a little tought, but mostly okay. I won't even mention a particular meatloaf incident - your stomach would churn. The Wife can tell you about the fields of salad she consumed during her four years.

It seems, however, that this kind of food - the cause of so much post-traumatic distress - is being left in the freezer. Dijon-crusted chicken, cheese quasadillas, and sauteed spinach are now being plated in university dining halls.

Colleges nationwide have been innovating. Stanford offers “spa waters,” mineral water with cucumber, watermelon, mint and other flavors. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst shares guest chefs with eight colleges. Yale has an organic cafe. Brown has a farmers’ market. At Wheaton College in Illinois, low-carbon meals use local and organic food; students can choose Thursday dinners illuminated only by the lights outside.

“The food is part of meeting the expectations of those enrolled and those who are going to choose you,” said Steve Thomas, director of admissions at Colby College in Waterville, Me. “We budget $15,000 a year just for meal tickets for prospective visiting families and students.”

Modern college students have a savvier palate than their parents:

Mr. Johnson said students expect to eat the way they do in a restaurant: “We discovered a way in the marketplace concept — kitchens brought out from behind the wall, cooking platforms with pizza ovens, broilers, fryers — so students can see you throw the dough, top it to order and put it in the wood-fired oven. And they don’t just want that product in name only, but they want it to be authentic, because they’ve eaten at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant and they want to smell that hickory wood burning.”

leave your faith at college orientation

Do undergrad students abandon their faith when they further their education? A new study suggests, perhaps not.

Whether the source is God and Man at Yale or any number of more recent studies, the conflict between a college education and the faith that students bring to campus (secular campuses at least) is well accepted. The more you pursue a higher education, the more likely you are to abandon your faith — at least that’s what conventional wisdom holds.

“Actually we’ve just been wrong about this for quite a while,” said Mark D. Regnerus, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the authors of a new study that suggests students who attend and graduate from college are more likely than others to hold on to their faith.

A perceived sense of practicality seems to be holding sway:

Regnerus said that what the study suggests — and his personal experience confirms — is that while there are plenty of non-religious professors around, they aren’t trying to discourage any students from practicing their faith. “Of course there are some who are hostile to religion. But they don’t teach that. They teach their discipline,” Regnerus said. The attitude, he added, is: “Whatever I think about evangelicals, when I go to teach quantum physics, I teach quantum physics.”

More broadly, so many students are in pre-professional programs, Regnerus said, that they are focused on practical matters much more than on wondering whether God exists. As a Christian who earned his undergraduate degree at Trinity Christian College, Regnerus said he spent a lot of time talking about philosophical issues in college, but that’s not the norm for many undergrads these days. (Christian colleges in recent years have experienced a boom, in part from students who don’t want to become secular, or whose parents don’t want them to become secular, and Regnerus said his study doesn’t contradict that belief. Because there is a decline in religious connection during the college years — looking at religious and secular institutions together — those at religious colleges are less likely to experience that decline.)

Farewell, Chief Illiniwek

I link to this story out of deference to my wife's great-aunt, a great fan of the Fighting Illini. I'm a Buckeye, so I couldn't care less what those Illinois people do.