\n<\/p>\n
In the past few years, people have talked a lot about the \u201cdiploma divide\u201d as the new fault line in American politics. The prevailing wisdom is that higher education has recently begun to act as an ideological sorting machine, creating two Americas with radically different views on the nation\u2019s most pressing problems.<\/p>\n
Some pundits blame \u201cwoke\u201d professors and others working-class resentment. But the consensus across the political spectrum seems to be that college transforms a person\u2019s core political beliefs and that it is driving Americans apart.<\/p>\n
There is just one problem with this narrative: The data does not support it. Our research indicates that the policy views of graduates have not been shifting away from those of nongraduates over time.<\/p>\n
Compared to those with less education, college graduates do have more liberal views on social issues, like abortion, immigration, gender issues and so on. But that was equally true 50 years ago. This difference has remained remarkably stable across generations, even as the country as a whole has steadily moved leftward on social issues. Moreover, this difference is not literally a divide between those with and without diplomas. Rather, it is part of a broader trend whereby more years of education tend to correlate with more liberal views on social issues.<\/p>\n
When it comes to economic issues, related to taxation and government spending, we actually find the opposite pattern. College graduates are more economically conservative<\/em> than those without degrees. Although this difference is small, it too has been relatively stable over time.<\/p>\n So, when focusing on Americans\u2019 political beliefs, the familiar narrative about a growing divide between graduates and the rest doesn\u2019t hold up. Yet our research indicates that something has changed in recent years\u2014it\u2019s just not about people\u2019s views on hot-button issues, but about how they see themselves.<\/p>\n In the past, educational attainment was not meaningfully related to whether someone would identify as liberal or conservative. On the self-placement scales used for decades in major public surveys like the General Social Survey and the American National Election Studies, college graduates looked the same as nongraduates. However, that pattern broke sharply in the early 2010s.<\/p>\n Since around the start of Obama\u2019s second term, college graduates have increasingly adopted a liberal identity, while Americans with some or no college education have remained largely stable. This has resulted in something we can rightly call a \u201cdiploma divide\u201d\u2014not a linear relation, where each extra year of schooling tends to mean a slightly more liberal identity, but a split specifically between those with and those without diplomas. The bachelor\u2019s degree has come to mark a symbolic threshold.<\/p>\n This distinction between beliefs and identities is crucial because American politics is currently haunted by affective polarization, where people dislike the other side simply for being the other side. Seeing oneself as a member of a particular political tribe is far more strongly associated with distrust and hostility toward others than one\u2019s views on abortion or tax policies.<\/p>\n Seen in this light, the question is not whether going to college leads students to adopt leftist views, but whether the college experience now nudges students to adopt a specific political badge. The data suggests that it does.<\/p>\n On average, students shift toward more liberal identities between freshman and senior year. This trend only began in the late 1990s. However, in the years since, students\u2019 leftward identity shifts have grown steadily larger. The size of these changes in students\u2019 political identities varies depending on their fields of study, demographic backgrounds and even academic aptitudes. Those looking for evidence of across-the-board liberalization are out of luck. But it would be foolish to deny that something consequential is underway.<\/p>\n Higher education may not be dramatically shaping what Americans think about political issues, but it is increasingly determining which political team they play for. This is the real diploma divide. Although smaller than people often think, our research indicates that it is very real and growing. In an age of polarization and precipitously declining public trust in higher education, we would do well to heed this warning sign.<\/p>\n Michael Vazquez is a teaching assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy and associate director of the Parr Center for Ethics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.<\/em><\/p>\n Michael Prinzing is a research and assessment scholar in the Program for Leadership and Character at Wake Forest University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the past few years, people have talked a lot about the \u201cdiploma divide\u201d as the new fault line in American politics. The prevailing wisdom is that higher education has recently begun to act as an ideological sorting machine, creating two Americas with radically different views on the nation\u2019s most pressing problems. Some pundits blame<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[23975,23974,5511,4171,440,455],"class_list":{"0":"post-47389","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-beliefs","9":"tag-diploma","10":"tag-divide","11":"tag-identity","12":"tag-opinion","13":"tag-real"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}