On Saturday, April 13, 2002, at 12:14 PM, Marco Anglesio wrote:
> On Sat, 13 Apr 2002, James Heartfield wrote:
>> This doesn't match the findings in a variety of surveys that women are
>> marginally more conservative than men on questions of sexual
>> promiscuity, homosexuality, pornography and so on. Maybe students are
>> not typical.
>
> "Maybe"? Students are hugely more liberal than general population, and
> they get more so the longer they spend in higher education. This, as
> well,
> is a well-documented phenomenon.
>
> Marco
this is a tangent, but . . . i remember when i was in college our politics and public policy prof for american government, a conservative guy but a smart guy and the best paper-commentator i ever had including grad school, trotting out precisely this phenomenon. students get more "liberal" over the course of college and then tend in general to slide back over into conservatism the longer they are out of college.
but i wonder if this wasn't really based on an analysis of baby boomers and not of college qua college over longer periods of time. what would this actually look like for the generation that was in high school/college in teh 80s?
i'd actually like to see some studies along with methodology about this.
incidentally, let's also not confuse political liberalism/leftism with sexual liberalism.
j