Hope?

Arthur Brooks (a professor at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Public Affairs) has a commentary piece in today’s Wall Street Journal ($), that discusses conservative parental fears that their children will be brainwashed into liberalism when they send them off to school. An excerpt:

The most recent evidence on this subject comes from the mid-1990s, in the University of Michigan’s National Election Studies. These survey data uncover two facts. First, people who go to college are more likely to vote Republican than those who don’t go to college. Adults 25 and under from Republican homes are, for example, 11 percentage points more likely to vote Republican if they attended college than if they didn’t. And young adults from Democratic households are 11 percentage points less likely to vote Democrat if they’ve gone to college than if not.

Second, nearly everybody grows more likely to vote Republican as they age — but especially college graduates. It is no shock that the vast majority of people of all educational backgrounds from Republican homes vote Republican by age 40. It may come as more of a surprise that 40-year-olds with Democrat parents are far less likely to vote Democrat if they’ve gone to college than if they haven’t. In fact, while three-quarters of the uneducated group still vote Democrat, the odds are only about 50-50 that the college graduates vote this way. And they’ve not all become skeptical political independents: Fully a third are registered Republicans.

This is an old study, but the conclusions are news to me. And somewhat hopeful. I don’t know of any reason to believe things have changed (in terms of brainwashing success) in the past ten years…

I find it very interesting — and a little surprising, in light of my personal experiences — that both age and education correlate negatively with liberalism. But hopeful, because we’re all going to get older, and because the American population’s average age is increasing. A wisp of hope to hang onto…