{"id":21983,"date":"2020-09-08T05:43:24","date_gmt":"2020-09-08T05:43:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=21983"},"modified":"2020-09-10T15:43:01","modified_gmt":"2020-09-10T15:43:01","slug":"does-4-years-of-college-make-students-more-liberal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/does-4-years-of-college-make-students-more-liberal\/","title":{"rendered":"Does 4 years of college make students more liberal?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matthew J. Mayhew<\/a>, The Ohio State University<\/a><\/em> and Alyssa N. Rockenbach<\/a>, North Carolina State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Research Brief<\/a> is a short take about interesting academic work.<\/em><\/p>\n

The big idea<\/h2>\n

Over four years of college, students develop positive attitudes for political liberals but not conservatives.<\/p>\n

Why it matters<\/h2>\n

Higher education needs support from conservatives<\/a> \u2013 lawmakers as well as taxpayers.<\/p>\n

But conservative critics<\/a> continue to fault higher education for making students more liberal<\/a>. The central argument is that higher education does not value politically conservative perspectives. As a result, conservative critics believe college students are not exposed to conservative scholarship<\/a> or teaching<\/a>. Research has shown that conservative students feel silenced<\/a> for voicing their political opinions in the college classroom.<\/p>\n

Through our analysis<\/a> of 3,486 students at 116 U.S. colleges and universities, we found that students\u2019 positive attitudes toward political conservatives were largely the same when they started college and four years later. Compared to their responses in fall of 2015, graduating college seniors in the spring of 2019 were just as likely to report that political conservatives made positive contributions to society and were ethical people. Similarly, they were also just as likely to say that they had things in common with \u2013 and had positive attitudes toward \u2013 political conservatives.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the whole story.<\/p>\n

Students were actually surveyed over three points during college. In 2015, 42% of students had \u201chigh\u201d positive attitudes toward political conservatives. That share increased substantially to 50% in 2016. Three years later, in 2019, it returned to 42%.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, positive attitudes toward politically liberal people generally increased during college. All told, 58% of students reported \u201chigh\u201d positive attitudes toward this group in 2015. That number grew to 66% in 2016 and then hit 70% in 2019.<\/p>\n

[Deep knowledge, daily.<\/em> Sign up for The Conversation\u2019s newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

At first glance, these findings may seem to support the idea that college makes students more liberal. However, if that were the case, positive attitudes toward political conservatives would have plummeted well below pre-college levels.<\/p>\n

Why did student attitudes toward liberals steadily grow more positive while attitudes toward conservatives did not? Notably, data between the second and third wave of collection took place after the 2016 presidential election. This raises the possibility of a potential Trump effect. But we cannot be certain because changes in students\u2019 attitudes can be attributed to any number of factors within and beyond their campus experience.<\/p>\n

What still isn\u2019t known<\/h2>\n

What experiences lead students to develop more positive attitudes toward political liberals? Or conservatives? Answers to these questions will enable educators to design learning environments that help students develop more positive attitudes toward all political ideologies, not just their own. In a time of heightened political polarization, cooperation across political differences is imperative to a functioning democracy. Higher education has the potential to contribute to this aim.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next<\/h2>\n

We don\u2019t know if and how these attitudes will continue to change \u2013 or how another contentious presidential election might affect them. Ultimately, we would like to gather this information by surveying this cohort again after the 2020 elections.\"The<\/p>\n

Matthew J. Mayhew<\/a>, The William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher Professor of Higher Education, The Ohio State University<\/a><\/em> and Alyssa N. Rockenbach<\/a>, Professor of Higher Education, North Carolina State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Matthew J. Mayhew, The Ohio State University and Alyssa N. Rockenbach, North Carolina State University The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea Over four years of college, students develop positive attitudes for political liberals but not conservatives. Why it matters Higher education needs support from conservatives \u2013 lawmakers […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":21984,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[292],"tags":[7439,4130,2674,6826,3960,3959,13,1812,5436],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21983"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21983"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21983\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21995,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21983\/revisions\/21995"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}