Is higher education politically liberal? The answer is clearly, "yes." In virtually every
field within academia, the great majority of professors identify strongly with both
leftist causes and the Democratic Party.
Renowned Sociologist Seymour Lipset was one of the first to examine this question. Based
on a number of surveys taken since World War II, Lipset concluded that academics are more
likely than any other occupational group to identify their views as left or liberal. Professors
tend to support a wide variety of egalitarian social and economic policies. They are far
more likely to vote for Democratic candidates, and in many cases back leftist third parties.
While Lipset based his conclusions on faculty surveys from the 1950s through the early 1980s,
more recent studies show that the professoriate's commitment to leftist politics has only strengthened.
In our book, The Still Divided Academy, my colleagues April Kelly-Woessner, the late
Stanley Rothman, and I take an in depth look at faculty views at the beginning of this century.
Consistent with earlier studies we find, that a near twelve percent of professors
see themselves as Republicans. But even this statistic is deceiving. Among this small minority
of faculty who call themselves Republicans, fifty-one percent are pro-choice; sixty three
percent support more environmental regulations, even though it could cost people their jobs.
And thirty-nine percent of Republicans believe that the government should work to reduce
the income gap between the rich and the poor.
So not only are there relatively few Republicans in the ranks of faculty, but many of the Republican
professors hold views that are identical to Democrats outside of academia. Based on the
best evidence, fewer than one in 10 professors hold conservative social, political, moral,
or economic views.
Although college professors are overwhelmingly on the left, there are big differences in
the political values of faculty depending on their field. Dan Klein, Professor of Economics
at George Mason University, and his colleagues conducted an in-depth study of six academic
disciplines: Anthropology, Economics, History, Philosophy, Political Science and Sociology.
Within these fields, faculty backed the Democratic candidate over Republican candidates by a
ratio of 15 to 1. The Left's advantage was most lopsided in Anthropology and Sociology,
where Democratic faculty voters outnumbered Republican voters by approximately 30 to 1.
In Political Science faculty support for the Democrats over Republicans runs only 7 to
1 and in Economics the ratio is a mere 3 to 1.
On the surface then, it certainly appears that the odds are stacked against college students
receiving anything but a left-wing indoctrination,
but the picture is not so grim as it might first appear.
In the battle for ideas, conservative professors don't need
to be equally represented in a discipline to have an impact on the students they teach.
Whereas sociology or philosophy students may never hear a conservative perspective, most
economics and political science departments have at least one, and often more than one
Republican on the roster. Even in leftist academia, there are islands of non-leftist
thought, provided students who do not want to receive only one view of the world, know
where to look.
Given academia's overwhelmingly left wing bias,
what effect does this have on the students' thinking?
The evidence is somewhat surprising.
According to my research, students who enter conservative tend to remain conservative and
students who enter liberal tend to remain liberal. Conservative students, if they look
for conservative professors, can often find some. And liberal students can easily go through
four or more years at the University having never heard a conservative idea.
Ironically, therefore, it is not conservative students who suffer as a result of this overwhelmingly
liberal bias, but liberal students. They rarely, if ever, have their views challenged. And
if the point of college is to expose students to diverse world views, then the college experience
for liberal students is sadly lacking. And what about students who enter college without
any formed ideology? They're also shortchanged by higher education's liberal bias. These
students are pushed toward a left leaning worldview in large part because that's the
only perspective they've ever been offered.
Ideally, higher education should be about expanding students' minds by subjecting them
to new ideas, and testing their assumptions. That's exactly what most conservative students
experience. And that's exactly what most liberal students don't. And that's a shame.
I'm Matthew Woessner, Associate Professor of Political Science at Penn State University
Harrisburg for Prager University.