Does college turn people into liberals?

[egbertowillies]

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.

https://egbertowillies.com/2018/02/03/college-turn-people-liberals/

[salin]

1. I went to a conservative college (went in and left a liberal), during the Reagan years.

Folks didn't turn liberal while we were there. But...

I went to my 25th reunion just after Obama's first election - dang there were a ton of raging liberals. W. turned them into liberals - and life along the way.

[tblue37]

2. It tends to mitigate ignorance, and that mitigates the tribalism that undergirds a lot

of what passes for conservatism.

College also exposes students to people from other places, people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, people with different beliefs and worldviews, so the provincial tendency to demonize the "other" also is likely to be blunted in many college students.

[Comatose Sphagetti]

9. This

In college I had friends from all over the world. I learned people were people; there are no "others".

[gulliver]

12. Yep

[Different Drummer]

15. +1. n/t

[Hoyt]

3. Education (formal or other) leads to a search for truth. That's what ignorant white wingers fear.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

4. What college often does is to teach

people to think for themselves. Keeping in mind that reality itself is said to have a liberal bias, once people learn more about history, science, psychology, and so on, they get it that the world is not the narrow rigid place they may have been taught, especially in their churches. They stop being willing to buy into the authoritarianism of the Right, and become by definition, Liberal.

[highplainsdem]

5. Simply learning more tends to make people more liberal, which is why journalists as well as those

with more education tend to be liberal.

[Historic NY]

6. You don't hear them calling it a Conservative Arts Degree...

well do you....

[Cirque du So-What]

14. Conservatism is hardly an 'art'

It's merely reaction.

[Different Drummer]

16. Good point. n/t

[OregonBlue]

7. My first thought was of course not, education turns people in liberals. That's why the GOP

hates schools so much.

[Faux pas]

8. Not in my case.

I've been liberal/progressive most of my conscious life. But, even more so after I watched the dog attacks and water hoses used on HUMAN BEINGS in Birmingham on TV when I was 14.

[Bradical79]

10. Generally, I think it does

Also maybe depends on major. Reality has a liberal bias, so being less ignorant on certain subjects may naturally steer you in that direction. Some things that are part of the liberal Democratic platform should not be considered liberal ideology, but objective observation. They've basically conceded reality to one side of the political spectrum.

[Motley13]

11. intelligence does

[no_hypocrisy]

13. Knowledge and critical thinking skills aren't

"liberal". They are apolitical.

[Cirque du So-What]

17. I had the misfortune of suffering through two semesters

Macro & microeconomics taught by a female professor who worshipped at the feet of Arthur Laffer; she even went to grad school with the supply-side quack. Despite her best efforts to shut down criticism of her conservative economic bias, I remained defiant, proudly earning a 'C' in both her classes. If anything, her bias reinforced my trust in Keynesian economics and admiration for John Kenneth Galbraith's policies.

[Hortensis]

18. This has been studied, surprisingly mostly NO.

Yes, exposure to different peoples and ideas is "liberalizing," but it turns out it's mainly because people more "open" to that liberalizing effect are more likely to go to college. Still. There are, of course, college choices that will shield those who want from liberalizing effects. Plus, many of those who attend merely for that "passport to the middle class" resist the liberalizing effects.

Fairly recently science has discovered that personality is definitely genetically linked AND that we are all born with dispositions to variations of liberal or conservative. Environmental factors then have their influence, but no amount of education will undo our basic wirings.