A new academic paper by Micah Baum, Joaquín Endara, and Annaliese Paulson investigates whether Democratic college professors influence the political leanings of their students, finding no causal evidence of such an effect. The question has been a flashpoint in American education policy debates, with lawmakers in several states advancing legislation aimed at curtailing perceived ideological bias on campus and several high-profile state-level initiatives to monitor or restrict how race, history, and politics are taught in public universities.

The researchers linked voter registration data to salary records across 33 public flagship universities in the United States. Their analysis confirmed that faculty at these institutions skew disproportionately Democratic, a trend especially pronounced in the humanities and social sciences. This finding aligns with a long-documented pattern in higher education research showing that liberal and Democratic identification is more common among university faculty, particularly in fields outside the natural sciences and business.

To move beyond correlation and estimate causal effects, the authors examined detailed student transcripts from one flagship university. They found that students generally become more liberal over the course of their college years, regardless of their chosen major. However, students also demonstrated a tendency to sort themselves toward instructors whose ideological profiles matched their own.

The study's central identification strategy exploited plausibly random variation in the timing of when particular instructors were assigned to teach specific courses. By comparing students who took the same courses under instructors of different political persuasions, the researchers isolated the effect of faculty partisanship. The result: faculty partisanship had no measurable effect on student partisanship.

To further probe whether classroom content itself might shift political views, the authors conducted text analysis of course materials. They found that students' exposure to liberal-oriented topics was driven primarily by student course selection—reflecting student demand—rather than by instructors introducing such content on their own initiative. The authors describe this pattern as leaving "little room for indoctrination." The finding contrasts with the premise behind recent policy efforts in states such as Florida and Texas, where legislation has been enacted to restrict certain instruction and require periodic review of faculty viewpoints.

The paper was highlighted by Jay Van Bavel on X (@jayvanbavel) and is available through EdWorkingPapers. Author pages: Micah Baum, Joaquín Endara, and Annaliese Paulson.

Source: Marginal Revolution