Sociologists have long tried to document the influence religion has on social groups and in a new paper, a team of academics correlates its role in education. Louisiana State University Sociology Professor Samuel Stroope and colleagues searched for a relationship between religion and educational attainment in the U.S.
Using data from the U.S. Congregational Life Survey, a national sample of religious congregations and members, Stroope and colleagues from Hope College and Baylor University compared college completion to individual Biblical literalism and congregational Biblical literalism.
It's no surprise they found what they were looking for, that individual Biblical literalism is negatively associated with college completion and congregational Biblical literalism is negatively related to college attainment. But it doesn't tell us much because when congregational literalism increased, the odds of completing college decreases more sharply for non-literalists than for literalists. In other words, literalism is not much of a factor when you try to declare one dependent variable for something complex like why people don't finish college. It isn't like there is something inherently more literate about being a Catholic versus a non-denominational Bible-based church. Almost every employee at Starbucks has completed college so sociologists could declare that Starbucks causes people to go to college - but that is why sociologists are only allowed to visit the science buildings on campus one day per year.
Article: "Social Context and College Completion in the United States: The Role of Congregational Biblical Liberalism," Sociological Perspectives, http://spx.sagepub.com/content/early/2015/01/01/0731121414559522.full.pdf