September 4, 2026 Categories: In Print / Halacha & Hashkafa
Is it proper to attend a secular university?
Is it proper to attend a secular university?
Higher education is to be praised as it is a means for a young person to further his/her breadth of knowledge and understanding as he/she grows intellectually from an adolescent and transforms to an adult as well as a productive member of society. And there are many in our community, including famous Orthodox rabbis and leaders, who went to the universities of yesteryear and became the pillars of their strictly Orthodox communities and amassed large followings, both as rabbis and roshei yeshiva. However, that was only when they combined the university study with Torah study.
Yet in today’s day and age we know that many of the professors in the colleges are at best agnostic and woke in their approach to the condition of the world and to the world society that they wish to impose. Additionally, there is often a very hostile student environment.
Both the yeshiva and Bais Yaakov movements have proven these past seventy or so odd years to be the basis for forming a religiously observant individual and as a consequence a strong Torah-observant Jewish home.
It is understood that one must have the ability to provide for his family and to gain the tools of a profession that is not only a benefit to society but a means of supporting his family. While a university education might offer that, there are some occupations that don’t require that, think of the plumber, electrician or various building trades and services. I have even heard that to be a rosh yeshiva one need not have a college degree.
While not everyone has the makings of a professional, all have the need of a firm yeshiva education to assure that their lives are lived on the spiritual plane that G-d expects of them. As mentioned, the secular university very often provides fare that is antithetical to that goal of a proper Jewish life. Therefore, colleges and universities such as Touro University and Yeshiva University, as well as other programs that are in concert with the various yeshiva and Bais Yaakov seminaries, are the proper way to go for those contemplating their future life’s endeavors.
– Rabbi Yaakov Klass is chairman of the Presidium of the Rabbinical Alliance of America; rav of Congregation K’hal Bnei Matisyahu in Flatbush, Brooklyn; and Torah Editor of The Jewish Press. He can be contacted at yklass@jewishpress.com and Rabbi@igud.us.
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When we consider the appropriateness of secular college for an Orthodox Jew, our knee-jerk reaction may be to consider the impact that the culture of secular college may have on causing one’s level of religious observance to deteriorate. Some claim that a high percentage of Orthodox students go off-the-derech in secular college, but it’s not clear whether it is the environment of secular college that causes many Orthodox students to go off-the-derech or whether these students had already inclined to go off-the-derech and one expression of that desire was to attend a secular university. Nevertheless, there are certainly more challenges to religious observance in a secular university as opposed to a Jewish university.
Generally, I think Orthodox students should strive to attend a Jewish university. I, for one, attended Yeshiva University and I found that the immersive Jewish experience there, including the opportunities for high-level talmud Torah and religious growth, is vastly superior to what can be offered in a secular college.
There are probably some students for whom a secular university might be a preferred option. Some students may thrive in a secular university because they may be called upon to take on leadership roles in a religious capacity, such as to help make the minyan or to arrange Torah study opportunities, when they might not be able do so in a Jewish college setting when there are already plenty of minyanim and Torah study opportunities. For some students, a particular university may offer greater career opportunities in a particular field of study.
However, for the vast majority of students, I believe that the immersive religious experience at a Jewish university is so qualitatively superior than that which is offered at a secular university such that the Jewish university should be the default option for most students.
– Rabbi Jonathan Muskat is the rabbi of the Young Israel of Oceanside, a rebbe at Shulamith High School, and a pastoral health care liaison at Mount Sinai South Nassau.
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