Some Hindus more educated than others

According to the Pew Research Centre for religion and public life, Hindus are among the least educated of the world’s major religious groups when looked at globally. The research, which focused on religion and education, indicated that Jews were the most highly educated anywhere in the world, while Hindus were the least educated, was released earlier this week. However, on Monday, the Centre released an update clarifying that not all Hindus were poorly educated.

Senior editor at Pew, Michael Lipka, claimed that this data was “not true of Hindus everywhere, especially those who are living in economically-advanced nations”.

Lipka claimed that Hindus of ages 25 and older in India have an average of 5.5 years of formal schooling, while Hindus in Bangladesh have 4.6 years, and Nepal have 3.9 years—even less education.  

The detailed study goes into the educational status of Hindus in nearly 27 major countries of the world where the religion is prevalent. It claims that 98 per cent of the world’s Hindu adults live in three countries—Bangladesh, Nepal and India—and that their low levels of education and high levels of poverty explain why patterns among Hindus in South Asia align very closely with patterns among Hindus overall.

Worldwide, Hindu adults average 5.6 years of education, compared to a global average of 7.7 years for all adults. Hindus rank significantly behind Jews, Christians, religiously unaffiliated people and Buddhists. However, when the Hindus excel, they surpass their counterparts.

“Hindus in Europe, North America and elsewhere are very highly educated and in many cases, even more so than members of other religious groups within those countries.

In fact, Hindus are more educated than non-Hindus by an average of at least half a year of schooling in 70 per cent of countries with data on both Hindus and non-Hindus (27 countries).”

Lipka claims that in the US, Hindu adults have an average of 15.7 years of formal schooling, and 96 per cent of adults have post-secondary degrees.

“Both of these measures of educational attainment are considerably higher for Hindus than for all other Americans, who average 12.8 years of schooling. About four-in-ten non-Hindu US adults have college degrees (39 per cent).”

The study traces these patterns across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. In all, however, Hindus make up relatively small religious minorities, which does little to raise overall figures.

HINDU EDUCATION

Hindus have 5.6 years of schooling, on average, worldwide.

In North America, Hindus of ages 25 years and older, have 15.1 years of schooling. In Europe, that figure is 13.9, in latin America-Carribean, that’s 9.0, in sub-saharan Africa that’s 8.8, and in Asia-Pacific, it’s 5.5.