The Effect of Research Universities on Student Partisanship and Turnout | Hacker News Reader

The Effect of Research Universities on Student Partisanship and Turnout

danielfiroozi.com

22 pointsluu21 comments

> Suggestive evidence is more consistent with peer socialization in college and long-run mechanisms than intentional efforts by faculty or curricula

So students are pressured to conform to local majority views and eventually internalise those views. Since said students are claimed to go on to wield disproportionate power in society, a policy proposal based on this work might be to introduce mechanism to counterbalance this pro-Democrat conditioning in higher education institutions.

1.) Peer socialization isn't the same as peer pressure. If you come from a worker family background you are more likely to vote for labour parties even if your parents never 'pressure' you to vote for them.

2.) That democratic ideas are more popular for educated people or that rural areas lead to more republican attitudes shouldn't lead to the idea that we need policy to balance either. Rather a plurality of parties and votes would be something to strive for.

I think it's safe to conflate the two in this context. Someone going through the UC system is bound to experience very strong peer pressure to hide or change any conservative views may have held. As personal example, I had participated in research group meetings (at a much less left-leaning institution) that included quite vulgar Trump bashing sessions. It goes beyond universities and among the main reasons why Republican candidates usually underperform in polls [1].

> That democratic ideas are more popular for educated people or that rural areas lead to more republican attitudes shouldn't lead to the idea that we need policy to balance either. Rather a plurality of parties and votes would be something to strive for.

Fair enough if not for the fact that university education is the gateway (as the OP article mentions) to positions of economic and political power. If very few people with conservative views pass through the social filter, the conservative part of the population becomes disenfranchised, which is bad for democracy.

[1] "Second, suburban Republican college graduates are more likely to fear professional sanction for their views and are therefore self-censoring more, including in surveys." https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-did-republicans-out...

Was the research group meeting about politics or did this randomly come up during them? And honestly it wouldn’t surprise me for college students to bash Biden as well. Why associate your political beliefs so strongly with one man? Surely someone saying Trump is a criminal business man says nothing about whether your belief on income taxes is legitimate.

Not to say my college experience was typical, but it was largely apolitical. There were student groups for Republicans and Democrats and if you didn’t want anything to do with politics you didn’t have to. I didn’t spend my time discussing politics with my friends, my professors didn’t lecture about how much Bush sucks during their Operating Systems course, and my classmates weren’t bringing up how immoral the Iraq war was during the single philosophy course I took.

I come from a conservative state, the school population would likely have only slightly leaned left. I didn’t feel pressured about my conservative beliefs. Looking back at the time, though, I shifted from center-right to center. Not because of being clubbed over the head in arguments, but from exposure to ideas and experiences and beliefs that my rural upbringing sheltered me from.

Sure, if you want to discard the first amendment.

I feel like this was a tongue-in-cheek proposal, but why would we want to be the thought police here? These are, after all, students sharing their beliefs with other students.

Conservatives have spent decades demonizing higher education as professor-led indoctrination centers. This would have the likely effect of fewer conservatives going to college and fewer conservative parents sending their children. So in that kind of environment, of course the campus becomes more and more liberal, and that’s the pool of people who later become professors, so a higher and higher percentage of professors are liberal.

It’s sorta funny your proposal is to send more conservatives to college to counterbalance the liberals, but that’s a problem with decades-long conservative messaging and not anything the schools are doing.

As an aside, there’s no real solution here for conservatives. Young people lean liberal. I grew up conservative in a conservative state, but college and debates with other students opened my eyes to other perspectives and I’ve shifted left ever since. Exactly like the findings in the study.

The issue is growing up our beliefs are segregated along that urban/rural divide. Where I grew up, conservative kids were the majority. As soon as you mix people between that line (college), you will almost always have a majority liberal lean even in conservative states. Which as you noted will lead to conservatives becoming more liberal, as I did. Although I wouldn’t say pressured, at least in my case it was exposure to different ideas more than anything.

I think that’s ultimately why conservatives demonize higher education as indoctrination. Not because it’s literal indoctrination like a church listening to a preacher, but because their kids raised conservative will meet kids raised liberal and it’s far more likely the conservative kids shift left than the others shift right. That spells disaster for a party.

It's very easy to take these circumstances and give it a different spin. How about individuals are more receptive to ideas from their peers. In college they are exposed to more political ideologies, and they adopt the best ones, which happen to be "pro-Democrat." I don't actually know the mechanism, or if any of this is true, all I'm trying to point out is your framing is going to adjust the way you view the outcome. The way you frame this ("counterbalance this pro-Democrat conditioning") comes off as anti-democratic (political system, not party), and I'm really curious what your opinion is about social media that labels Republican disinformation (for example, birtherism, the 2020 election was stolen, etc.) because there has been a lot of research done to show social media amplifies those messages more than ones from the left. Does that require counterbalancing?

I don't think one can do a study using data exclusively from the University of California system and claim it applies to "research universities" in general. Notwithstanding New York, California is the current best example of a "liberal hellhole" state, so it would make sense that admission to that particular state's public university system is eventually associated with an increased left bent. Let's see this exact study methodology reproduced with e.g. Stanford admissions data where the Hoover Institution is a prominent presence, or the University of Mississippi/Alabama or Louisiana State University located in conservative hotbeds.

People should actually read the 135 page dissertation and then leave a comment here with an opinion or an analysis. Anything short of that is meaningless critique.

To be clear, the conclusion begins on page 22 and ends on page 24. The rest of the pages after that are references, tables, appendices, etc.

Your premise here appears to be something like "no one can meaningfully discuss or contribute to discussion without spending a great deal of time poring over minute details of a dissertation."

I suspect that's an overreach. To be sure, anyone that is well-versed in statistical analysis can meaningfully contribute to the discussion (particularly of its statistical validity) by spending that kind of time, and weighing in with confirmation or refutation of the techniques and analysis used.

But I would offer the premise that reading the 2 pages of the conclusion, and pairing that with your own knowledge and life experience qualifies you to participate in and contribute to meaningful discussion.

An excerpt:

> Suggestive evidence is more consistent with peer socialization in college and long-run mechanisms than intentional efforts by faculty or curricula. Students who attend UC campuses as a result of the policy are exposed to more secular and left-leaning peers, live with other college students more often, and are more likely to attain a bachelor’s degree, earn higher incomes, and enroll in graduate school.

That seems like something that we can discuss without the entirety of the 135 page paper in our heads.

I actually read through the introduction and got to about page 6 when I realized that most people making comments here aren’t even going to do that. I agree with you, it’s not hard to read this and to have an opinion. But most people won’t even bother reading the first page. Becasue, internet.

Shocked! Shocked, that this comment is being moderated down!!

Would the article have been published if the author found evidence to the contrary?

This sort of response encapsulates the conservative victimhood complex. Whenever any data or research comes out that contradicts their viewpoints, the go-to is to assume bias and dismiss it without addressing its actual merits.

The writer is an Economics major, not one of the softer social sciences. According to a 2010 study[1] (yeah, yeah boy have things changed since then!), the more economics classes one takes, the more likely they are to lean Republican.

So would someone in a field that is split evenly between conservative and liberal viewpoints publish a paper with findings that suggest the conservative viewpoint is correct? Yes, don’t be silly, it clearly happens all the time. No reason to get conspiratorial here.

[1] https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/media/research/staff...

Do you mean self-published, like this is, or in some peer reviewed journal?

Not speaking for OG, but: associated with his real name, while (as a PhD in econ) deeply dependent on reputation-contingent job prospects.

People can have careers ruined by a tweet; self-published article under your own name is in no way free from constraints.

I understand what you are saying. But publishing evidence that exposure to liberal professors makes students more liberal is not the kind of thing that would hurt your job prospects as a PhD in econ. It would be seen as interesting and intriguing work.

You could pose this question about pretty much any research.

And you should. If the opposite could not have been published, or would have had enormous donwsides, you should discount its objectivity, same like if I pull out a knife and demand your wallet, one should discount your voluntariness.

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