Survey Finds More Young Conservatives Than Ever on U.S. College Campuses
by Jim Brown and Jenni Parker
February 2, 2004
(AgapePress) - A new survey says more college freshman in the United States are conservatives today than in years past. The annual poll conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles finds that liberal frosh today still outnumber conservatives -- but just barely.
UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute conducted the nationwide poll of American college freshman, and found that 24% say they hold liberal political views, while 21% refer to themselves as conservatives, and 50% considered themselves politically "middle of the road." During the Nixon Administration, the percentage of liberal students on U.S. campuses was at a high of 38%.
Dr. Mike Adams, a conservative professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington and a columnist for TownHall.com, believes the rise in conservative students is due in large part to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
"The big change that I noticed with students was that they never watched news shows until 9-11, didn't know the names of world leaders, and so on," Adams says. But now he says, "That has changed substantially, now that they have started to tune in and are listening to ideas.
The UNC-Wilmington professor says another important difference is that today's young adults "no longer have a media that is totally dominated by liberals." In addition to the broadcast media mainstream, Adams notes that cable television, the Internet, and other modern resources and technologies give students access to a wide field of political information and commentary. "It sounds to me like they're listening," he says, "and the conservative side is really winning them over."
Some college administrators have attempted to limit conservative expression -- for instance, by breaking up and forbidding "affirmative action" bake sales -- in which conservative students sell cookies pro-rated by race to protest affirmative action. But Adams feels the current statistics show that such efforts to stifle conservative students' free speech have backfired.
A case in point is Jason Van Dyke, president of the Young Conservatives of Texas, University of Dallas (http://www.udallas.edu) Chapter. Van Dyke says he was once kicked off the campus newspaper at his former school, the University of Michigan (http://www.umich.edu), for criticizing a homosexual rights event. But unflagging in his commitment to conservative causes, the college student recently attended the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference (http://www.cpac.org) in Arlington, Virginia, where he commented to the press, "I think this is a good time for campaigning, not a time to get lazy."
A Tie Is a Win
Professor Adams says he expects the number of young conservatives on American college campuses to continue growing. "I hope that we can see a point on college campuses where conservatives clearly outnumber liberals," he says.
But the professor calls the latest UCLA findings good news in and of itself, since it is said that most people become more conservative as they age. "If it is only a tie right now [between liberalism and conservatism] on college campuses, that bodes very well for the future, so I'm very optimistic," Adams says.
The UCLA survey questioned 282,549 first-year students from 437 four-year colleges and universities during their freshmen orientation and first week of classes, and this year marked the first time freshmen were surveyed since 9-11. Among several notable findings of the survey were that one-third of freshmen said they believe it is important to keep up with politics, and 45% said they support an increase in federal military spending.
