Issue date: 3/3/08 Section: News

It is often said that college students tend to be overwhelmingly liberal - and it seems this is true of college professors as well.

A recent study conducted by Penn State University professor Matthew Woessner and Elizabethtown College professor April Kelly-Woessner found that people who identify themselves as conservatives are simply less likely to pursue a doctorate. As a result, fewer conservatives become professors.

In the study, conservatives tended to choose a major in a professional field, like business or communications. Students in these majors generally expressed a lower level of interest in pursuing a doctorate.

Also, when asked to rank the importance of certain life goals, liberals and conservatives differed sharply. Compared to the liberals surveyed, conservatives were much more likely to choose financial security and having a family as most important, rather than making a theoretical contribution to science or authoring an original work.

These factors all contribute, the study argues, to a lower interest among conservatives in pursuing doctorates and becoming professors.

Penn Political Science professor Rogers Smith said he has noticed many of these trends here at Penn, saying conservative students "do tend not to think of academic careers, even though they are very capable of them."

Smith cited Wharton and the University's pre-professional atmosphere as major reasons that many conservatives choose to pursue careers outside of academia.

Woessner acknowledged that the survey is not a conclusive answer to the issue of liberals and conservatives in higher education.

"This is not the definitive answer; it is the first best guess about what derives the differences between liberals and conservatives," he said. "There's still a lot we don't know."

Regardless of this uncertainty, Woessner said the study's findings illustrate the importance of intellectual diversity within colleges. Having professors from both ends of the political spectrum, Woessner said, helps students think critically about important issues.

"Just as one could make the case for having different races, genders and economic backgrounds, there's probably nothing more important than having different ideological backgrounds when teaching, especially teaching politics," he said.

While the trends illustrated by the study seem to have some validity at Penn, administrators do not think this has an effect on the student experience.

"We do not seek or take into account in hiring, information about political attitudes or opinions," Associate Provost Vincent Price wrote in an e-mail.

Penn President Amy Gutmann expressed confidence in faculty members' abilities to keep their political views out of the classroom.

"The most important thing to recognize is that it is the responsibility of faculty to teach their subject, not to teach their political leanings or biases," she said. "We have a faculty who have lived up to that responsibility."

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