I was curious if college liberalizes students. Common sense tells me it does, but I have seen research that throws doubt on the idea.
Listed below are the mean conservatism scores by year of college for those attending college since 2000 (General Social Survey data).
Mean conservatism
Freshmen 4.04
Sophomores 3.71
Juniors 3.62
Seniors 3.69
Students tend to get more liberal as they move through college. The shift from the freshman to junior year is almost half a standard deviation, which means it is a fairly big change. So it does look like academics are somewhat successful at their goal of turning our youth into progressives. They seem to have the most luck in the first three years--the seniors are no more liberal than juniors.
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Does this take college dropouts into account?
ReplyDeleteDropouts are a little bit more conservative than non-dropouts. Students who are younger than their classmates seem to be significantly more liberal.
ReplyDeleteAny way to prove cause and effect? Look at community colleges? People who drop out each year?
ReplyDelete(I believe you...college is so liberal it's got to have some effect...)
What do you think about Bryan Caplan's argument against this? It is on page 248-50 of the Case Against Education. He argues that once you factor for drop-outs and self-selection, the indoctrination effect is only .014 a year of education, meaning it would take 70 years for someone to become an entire step on a 1-7 scale more liberal. He got his data from the GSS.
ReplyDeleteSome students like to study in college, some don't. Children who are interested have to travel far for college and university. A friend of mine, who is a CV writer in dubai, became very passionate about university and college, and after studying in a good university, he became a writer. You too should be able to achieve something.
ReplyDelete