Looking Inward, Freshmen Care Less About Politics and More About Money
By ALEX P. KELLOGG
If this fall's perplexing presidential race provided a lesson in politics, college freshmen may have slept through the class.
An annual survey of freshmen suggests that political engagement among first-year students has reached an all-time low, even though it typically jumps in election years. Only 28.1 percent of entering college students reported an interest in "keeping up to date with political affairs," the lowest level since the survey was established, in 1966, when the figure was 60.3 percent.
Now in its 35th year, the freshman survey, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, is the most comprehensive of its kind, and aims to show how the attitudes and aspirations of college freshmen change over time. The survey is normally conducted during freshman orientation and the first week of classes, and thus reflects students' experiences in their last year of high school as well as their expectations for college.
The results of the 2000 study are based on the responses of 269,413 students at 434 of the nation's baccalaureate colleges and universities. This was the first year the survey looked exclusively at four-year institutions, as two-year institutions, which have supplied a dwindling pool of survey respondents, were dropped. (The U.C.L.A. researchers adjusted figures from past surveys to make them comparable to this year's results.)
To some, like Kenneth S. Sherrill, chairman of the political-science department at the City University of New York's Hunter College and coauthor of Power, Policy, and Participation: An Introduction to American Government, the drop in political engagement is troublesome.
"It's a classic danger sign for any democratic political system," he says. "People were actually less likely to follow the election before Election Day than after, in spite of the fact that everyone knew that this was going to be a very close election."
David Presberry, a freshman at the University of Wisconsin at Madison who plans to major in political science, believes many of his peers feel alienated from politics. "The issues don't affect them, or they feel the candidates aren't reaching down to their level," he says. "A lot of people just think that politics nowadays [is] disgusting. ... So they don't pay attention to anything anyone says."
Yet the drop in political engagement does not mean that freshmen lack refined tastes or ignore broader social issues entirely. Nearly 80 percent reported attending a public recital or concert in the last year -- and well over half said they had visited an art gallery or museum. And while only 16.4 percent reported discussing politics, those doing volunter work held steady at 81 percent, the same as last year but up 15 percentage points from when the question was first asked, in 1989.
"It suggests that even though they're not interested in politics per se, they are interested in making a difference in their local communities," says Linda J. Sax, who heads the U.C.L.A. institute and directs the survey.
Other experts agree, and say that many freshmen aren't just tuning out -- they're turning inward. "I think increasingly students are focused much more locally and even individually on their own circumstances," says John Gardner, director of the Policy Center on the First Year of College at Brevard College, in North Carolina. "They're having to work so many hours for tuition and supporting themselves that frankly I think their day-to-day priorities have made it difficult for them."
In fact, fully 28.1 percent of freshmen reported that they felt "overwhelmed by all they had to do," with 49 percent saying they expected to cover at least a portion of their educational expenses with a summer job. More than a quarter of students reported that they expected to find a part-time job during the academic year as well.
Despite the prevailing view that students are politically apathetic, some freshmen said they didn't know any disenchanted classmates.
Marisa Maldonado, a first-year student at Northwestern University, says her friends were definitely engrossed by the high drama of the 2000 campaign.
"Everyone in my dorm was so excited about the elections," she says. "There were always huge crowds gathered to watch all the debates." But she says students might have felt shut out because "a lot of people don't feel that politicians are speaking to young people."
The waning interest in politics among freshmen could also stem from a shift in priorities. Though only 51.2 percent of first-year students seek "recognition from colleagues" as a vital measure of their success, nearly three-quarters of first-year students indicated they want to be "very well off." Experts say the wealth and prosperity of recent years may have lulled many young people into thinking that money is what's most important and that it will never be difficult to find.
"We've just gone through a decade -- perhaps more than any in history -- where the whole country has worshiped the pursuit of wealth. Many of these students want to cash in on it, too," says Mr. Gardner.
He says that the amount of debt students now expect to incur while in college also has a major impact on their aspirations, affecting everything from what majors they choose to whom they date.
The 2000 study also showed a continued shift to the political left among freshmen. For the fourth year in a row, the percentage of students who defined themselves as "liberal" or "far left" rose, to 27.7 percent -- up from 26.0 percent in 1999.
The leftward shift was also reflected in rising opposition to the death penalty and rising support for gay rights. Thirty-one percent of freshmen said that capital punishment should be abolished, an increase after years of declining opposition. Similarly, only 27.2 percent of freshmen reported that they felt it "is important to have laws prohibiting homosexual relationships" -- down from the record 50.4 percent who agreed with that statement in 1987. Fifty-six percent also believed that "same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status."
According to Albert Cho, a junior at Harvard University and co-chairman of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters Alliance, that represents significant progress. "It's important because it confers a sort of public legitimacy to the idea of gay and lesbian relationships," says Mr. Cho. "In general, people are becoming more comfortable with equal rights for gays and lesbians even though their attitudes about the private lives of gays and lesbians may not have changed."
In the realm of technology, freshmen seem increasingly accustomed to the idea of computers as essential parts of their everyday lives. Computer use among first-year students is at an all-time high, according to the 2000 study.
A record 78.5 percent of college freshmen reported "using a computer frequently during the year prior to entering college," up from 68.4 percent last year and 27.3 percent when the question was first asked, in 1985.
The gender gap among computer users has nearly closed, according to the study, but women remain much less confident of their technological knowledge than their male counterparts are.
Although the difference in the gender of users was less than two percentage points, women were half as likely as men to describe their computer skills as "above average" or in the top 10 percent of people their age.
Here again, experts point to broader social trends, noting that the computer world is dominated not only by male bodies, but by masculine values. "The important thing is that in our work force, [one] that's increasingly dependent on technological proficiency, women's relative lack of computer confidence may place them at a disadvantage when it comes to jobs," says Ms. Sax, the study's director. "We know that girls feel alienated from computing, that computing careers are seen as lonely, isolating."
However, experts say women consistently underrate their technical savvy.
"One factor that should be taken into account is that women tend to underestimate their abilities in math and science," says Jane Margolis, a researcher at U.C.L.A. and author of a forthcoming, as-yet-untitled book on women and technology.
"The activity of computing has really been marked and claimed as a male activity from very early on, even though college students and the younger digital generation have been using computers from very early on," she says.
Whatever freshmen may think or do these days, it is less and less likely to be influenced by alcohol. Less than half -- 48.3 percent -- of today's freshmen reported drinking beer "frequently or occasionally," down a sliver from last year and significantly lower than the high of 73.7 percent reached in 1982.
Cigarette use is also down, to 10 percent, though support for the legalization of marijuana continues to climb and now stands at 34.2 percent. Whether or not legalization will ever reclaim the whopping support it held in 1977 (51.3 percent) remains to be seen.
Copies of the report, "The American Freshman: National Norms for Fall 2000," are available for $25 each, plus $4.79 for shipping, from the Higher Education Research Institute, 3005 Moore Hall, U.C.L.A. Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, Box 951521, Los Angeles 90095-1521. An overview of the report will be available this week on the Web (<http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/heri/heri.html>).