According to the results of a study based on annual surveys by UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute, students at Catholic colleges and universities in the United States between 1997 and 2001:

"[E]ntered Catholic colleges pro-life (55% opposed to legal abortion, 45% in support), many graduated pro-abortion (57% pro-abortion, 43% pro-life).

Support for legalizing homosexual "marriages" increased from 55% to 71% by senior year.

Approval of having sex with someone known "for only a very short time" increased from 30% to 49% by senior year.

...Only 37% of seniors prayed more than one hour a week; 31% didn't pray at all.

Among Catholic students, 9% left the faith by graduation.  Although 11% of non-Catholic students converted to the Church-a welcome sign-their actual numbers were smaller and still left Catholic colleges with a net 4% loss of Catholics.

Among Catholic seniors, 13% did not attend a religious service in the past year (a four-fold increase since their freshman year), and about half attended only occasionally."

(Source: "CNS Report Finds Students Losing Faith at Catholic Colleges," Cardinal Newman Society, http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/catholic_world_report.htm; referencing Patrick J. Reilly, "Are Catholic Colleges Leading Students Astray?" The Catholic World Report, March 2003, p. 38-46; http://www.cardinalnewmansociety.org/CatholicWorldReportArticle.pdf.)  

"'The family is under siege,' said Arinze. 'It is opposed by an anti-life mentality as seen in contraception, abortion, infanticide and euthanasia. It is scorned and banalized by pornography, desecrated by fornication and adultery, mocked by homosexuality, sabotaged by irregular unions and cut in two by divorce.'

A theology professor walked out, as did some outraged students. Seventy faculty members signed a letter of protest. But traditional Catholics began asking a burning question: Why was it shocking for a cardinal to defend Catholic doctrines on a Catholic campus?"

(Source: Terry Mattingly, "Catholic college culture wars," [quoting Cardinal Francis Arinze at Georgetown University's 2003 commencement address], On Religion, August 13, 2003; http://tmatt.gospelcom.net/column/2003/08/13/.) 

No communities have been more enthusiastic about cohabitation as a substitute for marriage than those made up of university intellectuals. It may even be said that the nation's universities, more than any other institutions, have given cohabitation its new status of semi-respectability. That personal relationships within cohabitation typically prove far less reliable and far more treacherous than those within wedlock apparently does not much trouble the professors who have helped effect this shift in attitude toward what our ancestors regarded as living in sin. Still, the evidence exposing the comparative deficiencies of cohabitation does keep accumulating.

The latest proof that cohabitation hurts those who try it comes from American Journal of Public Health, proffered by a team of researchers from the United States (Harvard in Cambridge; the Population Council in Washington, D.C.) and Mexico (the Mexican Ministry of Health in Mexico City). In scrutinizing data on extrarelational sex among 3990 men living in Mexico City, the researchers noticed that "a cohabiting relationship [was] associated with extrarelational sex." Indeed, compared to married peers, cohabiting men were almost twice as likely to cheat on their partners (Odds Ratio of 1.81; p < .001). Of course, the authors of this new study point out that the female partners of unfaithful men "may be exposed to HIV and other S[exually]T[ransmitted]D[isease] risk via the sexual behavior of their male partners."

Interestingly, the authors of this new study also found that "men with a higher education reported more extrarelational sex than did men with a primary-school education" (Odds Ratio of 1.51; p < .001).

Perhaps in Mexico, as in the United States, the partiality of the university set for cohabitation has less to do with enlightened liberalism than it does with the unrestrained libido.

(Source: Julie Pulerwitz, Jose-Antonio Izazola-Licea, and Steven L. Gortmaker, "Extrarelational Sex Among Mexican Men and Their Partners' Risk of HIV and Other Sexually Transmitted Diseases," American Journal of Public Health 91[2001]: 1650-1652.)