Catholic and Protestant QUB staff on course to be eclipsed by those of neither religion

At present 45.4% of staff fall into the “neither” category, whilst 30.4% are from Catholic backgrounds, and 24.3% are from Protestant ones.

The trajectories of all three groups don’t change much with each passing year, indicating this is a long-term picture.

This means if things continue along the same track for another five years, then by 2026 a whopping 56.4% of Queen’s staff would be “neither”, whilst Catholic staff would have fallen to 23.8% and Protestants to 19.9%.

This is rather out-of-kilter with the general population.

Here are the results from the last census of Northern Ireland in 2011, when people were asked to state their religion:

> 41.6% Protestant

> 40.8% Catholic

> 17.7% neither/ unknown

It’s not totally clear whether the large number of non-Catholic, non-Protestant staff is down to academics being less inclined to identify themselves with religion than the general public, or because many staff are from overseas – or both.

The News Letter decided to look into the matter after the Belfast Telegraph published some figures on religious background earlier in the week.

The data obtained by the News Letter gives more of an indication of the long term trends, with figures for all three Queen’s departments spanning the past five years – from 2017 to 2021.

It also breaks down the religious backgrounds of teaching and research staff in all three Queen’s departments:

Arts, English & Language:

> 2017:

Protestant: 26.9%

Catholic: 42.3%

Neither: 30.8%

> 2021:

Protestant: 22.4%

Catholic: 35.4%

Neither: 42.1%

Medicine and Life Science:

> 2017:

Protestant: 34.8%

Catholic: 38.7%

Neither: 26.5%

> 2021:

Protestant: 27.2%

Catholic: 31.1%

Neither: 41.7%

Engineering and Physical Sciences:

> 2017:

Protestant: 23%

Catholic: 31.1%

Neither: 45.9%

> 2021:

Protestant: 21.7%

Catholic: 25.2%

Neither: 53%