UO Student Series: College and Hyperpolarization: What’s Right and What’s Left
College prepared me not only for my career, but also to have difficult political conversations and be accepting of the views of others
**This post is from a member of Professor David Frank’s class at the University of Oregon. In the coming weeks, we’ll share several more of these posts from young Oregonians. Go Ducks!**
Gavin Barrett is a political science student at the University of Oregon.
My history teacher asked on my first day of high school what we wanted to do when we grew up. It was a simple question that I did not give much thought: I knew I wanted to practice law. After about five kids answered, my turn rolled around and I quickly answered, “I want to be a lawyer.” My teacher’s response was not what I expected, “Good luck. College is a scam where you pay way too much money just to become a liberal.” The class chuckled under their breath.
While perhaps not the best advice for a fourteen-year-old aspiring to not only college, but also grad school, my history teacher’s views of the university system are not unique by any means. There’s a common belief in America that the education system is heavily left leaning. This is far from an unfounded theory: over 90% of university professors identify as liberal, only 5.7% of students are registered Republicans, and people with a bachelor’s degree vote blue 58% of the time.
The statistics alone seem to suggest a liberal bias. In an era of hyperpolarization, one of the primary struggles of our contemporary political moment is bridging the gap between the parties, and to many, it seems that universities are widening the gap. This has opened up the university system to a great deal of criticism over the years, whether from politicians or ninth-grade history teachers.
However, new research has come out that flips this perception on its head. This research by Mayhew, et. al. suggests that individuals who entered into college with a certain set of beliefs actually developed a higher level of empathy and respect for the other side of the political aisle.
A plurality of both conservative students and liberal students left college more accepting of the opposite party’s views. While this does not necessarily mean that people felt compelled to switch parties, it does show that people were more tolerant of the opposite side’s views. Not only this, but in a surprising turn, contrary to what intuition might lead you to think, liberal students were statistically more likely to become more accepting of conservative views than conservative students were to leave college accepting of liberal views. While there is plenty to explore in the fact that college actually made people more accepting of conservative views than vice-versa, one could write an entire essay about this alone, the more important implication is that attending college seems to have some depolarizing effect.
Given the importance of depolarization to the future of American democracy, it feels worthwhile to interrogate how college attendance is mitigating partisan tendencies. Admittedly, it's a difficult puzzle to crack:, but there are a number of possibilities, and the answer is likely a combination of all of them all.
Professors are Teaching Academically, not Politically
The first, and arguably most important reason for these findings is the fact that professors are not politicians. Not only are they bound by their expertise (remember a majority of professors teach outside of the humanities), but there is also little upside to preaching their political opinions when it is within their discipline, and in fact they often have specific incentives not to serve as rhetorical mouthpieces for their political affiliations. For example, an overly partisan professor may alienate certain students, receive worse reviews, etc.
I can say that in my three years as a political science major that , I have experienced my fair share of politically-biased moments led by professors and stoked by students. but for every one of those moments I have also read a nasty professor review that rips on a professor’s “political bias.” It is important to remember that students themselves have the agency and infrastructure to fight back against professors who they find problematic. They are far from pawns in the university system. This being said, inevitably, certain biases are inevitably going to creep into a lecture (especially on certain topics), but the preponderance of professors understand that they have little to gain from political diatribes and electioneering, and as a result intentionally steer clear in most cases.
Diversity of Opinion
Colleges strive to create diverse environments for their students. This means demographic diversity, but it also means ideological diversity.
Naturally, when a university recruits from across the nation, individuals who were previously in their isolated echo chambers throughout the nation gather together to have political interactions. Many students who I have interacted with over my three years in college speak about their first time having a lengthy conversation with someone across the political aisle as a formative experience. More importantly, they mention that it happened for the first time in college.
Through the simple proximity to and presence of other viewpoints, one is forced to reckon with them in ways they may not have previously. Moreover, it helps your willingness to respect the other party if your first interaction with one of its members is a bright, young student on their way to completing a college education.
Education Diversifies Perspectives
Inherent in the project of education is the process of widening the scope of one’s worldview. While personal interactions between students of different political opinions has definite benefits, there are also countless studies that show that education makes an individual more accepting of different viewpoints, cultures, and beliefs. Considering the fact that education offers the platform for different political dialogue in a structured way, requires the reading of different beliefs and their reasoning, and generally broadens one’s understanding of the world, it is unsurprising that a result is the respect of others’ views.
What Does This Mean?
While the conversation thus far has centered around universities and their ability to depolarize, it would be foolish not to extrapolate these lessons outside of the academic world. In order to depolarize our country it is clear that we must turn to interpersonal interaction between individuals of different political affiliations. We must embrace difference of opinion and listen with the intent to learn, not argue.
Similarly, we must actively attempt to diversify the information that informs our beliefs. Similar to how a professor might assign a piece of text, followed by a critique of that text, we must learn to actively seek out opposition to our opinions (the media has made this difficult, but that’s another blog).
Clearly, the project of depolarizing a country is not a simple one, but when looking at the power that education (particularly college) has on an individual’s respect and understanding of the political aisle, it appears that there is hope. To many, it seems that universities are increasing polarization in our country, but in reality, we may be relying on these very institutions to fight polarization in the future. Personally, I can say that college prepared me not only for my career, but also to have difficult political conversations and be accepting of the views of others. In today’s political situation, the latter may be just as important as the former.
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