Why do students in different disciplines have different political attitudes?
Fact: Academicians tend to be politically differentiated according to discipline, with those in the social sciences and humanities on the left, those in the natural sciences in the middle, and those in engineering and business on the right.
Argument: This is no coincidence. Academia – at least the social science and humanities sectors thereof, is biased against conservatives. Hence their underrepresentation.
Counterargument: Agreed: It’s not a coincidence. But the operative force is self-selection, not discrimination.
Status: The debate rages, generating more heat than light. (Here is an overview of one pertinent study.)
Fact: College students also tend to be politically differentiated according to discipline, with those in the social sciences and humanities on the left, those in the natural sciences in the middle, and those in engineering and business on the right.
Argument: This is no coincidence. Students’ political attitudes are being shaped by their professors.
Counterargument: Agreed. It’s not a coincidence. But the operative force is self-selection, not socialization.
Status: Much research has been undertaken, but few systematic attempts have been made to sort out socialization and self-selection effects.
A recent study by Mark Elchardus and Bram Spruyt (gated; abstract here) brings new data to bear on the sources of change in college students’ political attitudes. Elchardus and Spruyt surveyed a cohort of students entering college in Belgium in 2001 and reinterviewed them almost four years later; they also interviewed successive cohorts of entering students. The students answered batteries of questions pertaining to equality and redistribution (the “old cleavage”) and to a broad ethnocentrism/authoritarianism/anti-politics dimension (the “new cleavage”).
Data from the surveys of each year’s entering class clearly established that positions on the “old cleavage” were strongly related to choice of academic disciplines; because these were students who had not yet begun their college careers, these differences point toward self-selection, not socialization effects. Differences on the “new cleavage” were also strong in most entering classes.
The 2001-2004/5 panel of students posed the crucial test for socialization effects. Some slight effects did emerge, but they paled in comparison to those for self-selection. So: strong and fairly consistent self-selection effects, and weak to non-existent socialization effects. Not a definitive set of results of course, but more grist for the mill or, if you will, fuel for the fire.
Academicians in a wide array of fields have to adopt some position on the extent to which they give voice in the classroom to their own political views. This issue is especially crucial for political scientists. Could it be, though, that our hand-wringing about these matters is overwrought? If Elchardus and Spruyt are right, then whatever political attitudes we’re conveying to our students may not be having any great effect anyway, beyond reinforcing attitudes they brought with them when they enrolled.
Comments
Two points:
1) The UCLA Freshman and Senior surveys (which are conducted as a panel at some universities) offer pretty clear evidence that during college years, students tend to move to the left.
2) The reason for this is probably partly due to a liberal pool of faculty (and a liberal pool of students) in the social sciences and humanities. But, I think the key point to remember is that not all ideological and belief change that occurs during college can be explained by classroom characteristics. Most colleges tend to be environments were tolerance (or at least ambivalence) is promoted by administrations, faculty, students groups, residence halls, etc. The movement of students to the left could (probably) be as much explained by their exposure to liberal social norms (about drug and alcohol use, sexual behavior, tolerance of alternative viewpoints) outside of the classroom as it could by the ideological makeup of faculty.
Posted by: Thomas J. Leeper | June 16, 2009 04:16 PM
The idea that I can change my students’ political values is undermined by the fact that I can’t even get my students to come to class and do the reading and those things are directly tied to their grades. The idea that I, in fifteen weeks at 2 1/2 hours a week, have the ability to profoundly change the values they’ve internalized during eighteen to twenty-one years of life, has always struck me as absurd. Granted, it may be that I’m unusually inept and my colleagues routinely create such changes in worldview.
Posted by: Ted | June 16, 2009 08:59 PM
Regardless of the argument’s validity, Ted misses it’s point. The argument isn’t that an individual professor moves students to the left; it’s that exposure to a constant stream of liberal professors over the course of 4 years moves students to the left.
Posted by: Jeff | June 16, 2009 09:12 PM
The movement of students to the left could (probably) be as much explained by their exposure to liberal social norms (about drug and alcohol use, sexual behavior, tolerance of alternative viewpoints) outside of the classroom as it could by the ideological makeup of faculty.
Interesting, but this would still likely rely upon some level of self-selection. An individual not open at all to these norms is unlikely to react positively to the sex, drugs, and rock and roll that are serving as causal mechanisms in the picture. I do not know how things are done in the land of many lakes, but some (many?) colleges offer clean dorms free of such temptations. [Or, at least, mine did and I am making data the plural of anecdote.]
Moreover, it’s not clear how those social norms would/do translate to economic beliefs concerning the state and society, the “old cleavage;” the David Horowitz’ of the world are surely also worried about the economic left even if Marxist has lost some of its force as an ad hominem. While it doesn’t always work this way, an argument for less government influence upon social norms regarding sexuality or religion can just as easily, if not more easily, be used as grist for the argument that we should have less government interference in a whole swath of endeavors, including economic…leading to libertarianism and not American liberalism or other, further to the left, ideologies.
Posted by: Josh R. | June 17, 2009 11:57 PM