Does college turn people into liberals?

Does going to college make students into political liberals?  Conservative activists have claimed that universities brainwash students and indoctrinate them into believing a liberal ideology. The line of reasoning goes like this: Liberal college professors tell students “what to think,” and “what to think” is that conservatives and their positions are to be dismissed. A state lawmaker in Iowa has even suggested universities consider political affiliation in connection with hiring practices in order to balance out the distribution of political representation on the faculty.

Conservatives on campus feel outnumbered, given that about 60 percent of faculty identify as politically liberal. This imbalance supposedly hurts research, stifles open discourse and impairs overall education. Missing in this debate, however, is large-scale empirical evidence on how going to college actually impacts students’ attitudes.

Our findings

We are a group of academics interested in understanding how people of different religious, political and philosophical views interact. We are gathering data in a national study of college students called IDEALS.

Although we have partnered with the Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based national nonprofit that partners with colleges and universities to promote interfaith cooperation, our work in this area predates the organization and serves as the basis for the current IDEALS project.

The IDEALS study started following students when they entered college in 2015. Data on many topics, including tracking how students’ attitudes toward liberals and conservatives changed, were then gathered from the same students during their second year of college.

We measured how students viewed each political group separately along four dimensions. Specifically, we asked respondents the extent to which they thought liberals and conservatives were ethical, made positive contributions to society, and were people the student had something in common with. We also asked students if they had a positive attitude toward each group. The same questions were asked at the beginning of each student’s freshman and sophomore years.

These four attitudes are a great place to start gathering empirical support to test whether colleges are turning students against conservatives. If faculty were “telling students what to think” and students were internalizing these ideas, we’d expect to see evidence during the students’ impressionable first year.

Gains across the spectrum

The result? In our nationally representative sample of over 7,000 undergraduates at more than 120 colleges who answered both the first-year and sophomore questionnaire, students did demonstrate an increase in appreciative attitudes toward liberals after a year of schooling.

Among all students, 48 percent viewed liberals more favorably in their second year of college than when they arrived on campus. However, among the same students, 50 percent also viewed conservatives more favorably. In other words, college attendance is associated, on average, with gains in appreciating political viewpoints across the spectrum, not just favoring liberals.

Change in View From 1st to 2nd Year of College

The data show 31 percent of students did develop more negative attitudes toward conservatives. However, just about the same amount, 30 percent, developed more negative attitudes toward liberals.

Moreover, the data show us that the most growth in appreciation happened among people who were initially least appreciative of either liberals or conservatives. In simple terms, first-year students who begin college really disliking liberals or conservatives have their attitudes soften in college.

Turning to institutional type, students who attend a private college had a higher initial appreciative rating of liberals than their counterparts at public universities. However, overall views changed at both private and public colleges in the same way. Appreciative attitudes toward conservatives increased between the first and second year of college at both private and public to approximately the same degree.

Also, students trend toward appreciating liberal ideologies – both when they first come to college and after their first year. So, while students still favor liberal ideologies over conservative ones, this gap does not widen over the first year.

Exposure matters

Why?  We don’t know the answer. However, our best guess is this finding might ultimately have little to do with faculty directly and instead relate to the climate that campuses strive to create for the expression of diverse viewpoints, political and otherwise. While students may come to college never having met someone on the political “other side,” it is hard to avoid doing so in college. One central aim of higher education is to encourage contact, debate, discussion and exposure to persuasion from different kinds of people.

After a year of college, in other words, it might be more challenging for students to brand all liberals or conservatives as wrongheaded when they are studying, eating and learning alongside them. These experiences might even help students appreciate others as people with diverse histories and shared interests in working toward common goals.

One takeaway is clear: It appears as though the first year of college is doing what it should, exposing students to experiences that teach them how to think rather than what to think.

======================================================

This blog was co-written with Professor’s Matthew Mayhew, Alyssa Rockenbach, and Benjamin Selznick.  It originally appeared in TheConversation at this URL and was reprinted by the Chicago Tribune and Inside Higher Ed.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/sns-does-college-turn-people-into-liberals-90905-20180202-story.html

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/05/research-suggests-colleges-broaden-students-political-views

21 thoughts on “Does college turn people into liberals?

  1. Another worthless short-term history datapoint used by progressive-liberals to fit their academic narrative.
    If one wants to use “empirical data” don’t use a miniescule 3 year “study” if the intend is to offer a view with credibility.
    Pathetic that this data is being put forth as serious analysis.

  2. Thanks a lot to the author for the article. When I was in college we really spent a lot of time in the library and was a liberal. This was due to the difficulty of finding information for writing essays. The library resource has always had open access to unique books, including those on liberalism. Now in the era of the Internet, it has become much easier to work with information for writing an essay. It is enough to go to the site https://essayexaminer.com/essay-assist-review/ and choose the service you need for yourself. As for me, education is becoming more and more accessible for students not only from the United States but from the whole world.

  3. I would somewhat agree with the fact that a lot of political agenda is spoon-fed to students by many Universities. And yes, there is a lot of leftist liberal propaganda on play in many universities which tends to sort of brainwash college students, taking advantage of their young feeble minds. I read a whole research on this topic by a phd dissertation editing services agency and it was a lot similar to this. Even the statistics were surprisingly quite similar.

  4. College should make people better because it gives people knowledge. It is very important to develop an interest in knowledge in children from an early age. The best choice to interest the child would be some courses from monstereducation My child liked Singapore mathematics, for example.

  5. We are a set of lecturers interested by information how human beings of ENGLISH LEVEL A different non secular, political and philosophical views have interaction. We’re collecting records in a country wide study of university students referred to as ideals. Despite the fact that we’ve got partnered with the interfaith youngsters center,

  6. Information on numerous points, Custom Homework Writer including following how understudies’ mentalities toward dissidents and moderates changed, were then assembled from similar understudies.

  7. For sensible purposes, liberal education isn’t always truly differentiated from liberal arts schooling these days, except by scholars. Not like an expert and vocational training that prepares students for his or her careers, ERP Software Companies in Dubai liberal training prepares students to utilize their leisure time.

  8. به منظور افزایش کارایی فیلترهای شنی از شستشوی معکوس یا بک واش استفاده میشود. در این روش شستشو، آب در جهت عکس همیشگی وارد مخزن فیلتر شنی شده و با فشار زیاد از بستر شن و ماسه ای عبور نموده و آلاینده را از روی آن جدا می کند. به دلیل حرکت عکس و با فشار زیاد آب، این روش شستشو تاثیر بسیار زیادی بر بهبود کارایی مجدد دستگاه دارد. شستشوی فیلتر شنی

  9. از دیگر دلایلی که منجر به سرد نشدن آب داخل آبسرد کن میشود، خرابی برد دستگاه است. برد الکتریکی مانند مغز در بدن انسان است و فرمان های مختلف را برای قطعات ارسال می کند. در شرایطی که این قطعه دچار خرابی شده باشد، فرمان سرد شدن آب به دستگاه ارسال نخواهد شد. تعمیر و تعویض این قطعه نیاز به تخصص بالایی دارد و در صورت تعمیر بدون تجربه در نهایت منجر به خسارت های هنگفت خواهد شد. البته تعویض این قطعه نیاز به تخصص در زمینه تعمیر ساید بای ساید دارد. کار نکردن آبسردکن ساید بای ساید

  10. خرابی در فن کندانسور و همچنین گیر کردن پره های فن نیز می توانند علت صدا دادن ساید بای ساید باشند. به دلیل انباشته شدن گرد و غبار و ذرات روغن معلق در هوا بر روی فن کندانسور، لازم است آن را تمیز کنید تا صدای خچال کمتر شود. علاوه براین، اگر پره های هر کدام از فن های یخچال به دیواره کناری گیر دارد، آن را تعمیر کنید. صدا دادن ساید بای ساید

  11. یکی از اصلی ترین دلایلی که باعث میشود ساید بای ساید برفک بزند، باز و بسته شدن مداوم درب می باشد. با باز شدن مداوم درب هوای گرم محیط به داخل دستگاه منتقل شده و رطوبت کابین افزایش پیدا نموده و در نهایت به برفک تبدیل میشود. در برخی از مواقع خراب شدن لاستیک دور درب می تواند علت رخ دادن این مشکل باشد. در شرایطی که لاستیک دور درب خراب میشود، هوای گرم به طور مداوم وارد کابین شده و به همین دلیل رطوبت افزایش پیدا نموده و در اثر سرد شدن به برفک تبدیل میشود.
    برفک زدن ساید بای ساید

  12. تجهیزات پزشکی چیست؟ کلمه تجهیزات پزشکی در کشورهای مختلف دنیا معانی متعددی دارد. اما در حالت کلی این تجهیزات به هر گونه ابزار، وسایل و تجهیزاتی گفته می شود که در علم پزشکی برای تشخیص، پیشگیری و درمان بسیاری از بیماری ها استفاده می شود. در واقع هر کدام از این وسایل و تجهیزات و ابزار با هدف خاصی توسط تولید کنندگان این عرصه ساخته شده اند و به بازار عرضه می شوند. فروشگاه اینترنتی مایسا کلیه این وسایل با هدف سلامتی انسان ها ساخته می شوند. وسایل و ابزارهایی که در زمره گروه تجهیزات پزشکی قرار می گیرند بسیار زیاد و متنوع هستند.

  13. Exciting game, where you will show the wonders of the Drift Hunters. Get behind the wheel of a sports car and drive it to the limit while pressing the brake and taking the car in a controlled skid. Show all your skills extreme driving and drifting burn rubber on the race track.

Comments are closed.