Qualitative impact of spirituality in higher education

Abstract

Higher education system is currently challenged to focus more purposely on students’ holistic development, including nurturing the spiritual identities of students. Today students experience a disconnect between their academic studies and personal exploration of meaning in life. In order to understand the qualitative impact of spirituality in higher education, the present study aimed to make a comparative study of 60 undergraduate students each from Dev Sanskriti Vishwa Vidyalaya (DSVV), Hardwar, a University that claims to seamlessly integrate secular inputs with spiritual values of ancient Gurukul system and the conventional Delhi University colleges. A semi structured questionnaire, focusing on academic and non-academic experiences of students, perceived changes and self- growth was used for data collection. Qualitative analysis of data was done. Results indicated that the two groups differed on the different dimensions of semi structured questionnaire. A potential consequence of this research is that it will strengthen institutional initiatives and will encourage educators to consider the importance of students’ spiritual development when they develop academic and co-curricular programme.