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Is Collegiate Political Correctness Fake News? Relationships Between Grades and Ideology

Mon, April 8, 10:25 to 11:55am, Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, Floor: Second Floor, Simcoe

Abstract

Conservatives have long charged American higher education with promoting the political Left, and showing bias against conservatives. Using the HERI dataset surveying students in their first and fourth years in college (n=7,207), we use OLS regressions to test whether students’ political beliefs are associated with college GPA, after controlling for SES, demographics, and SAT scores. We find that while standardized test scores are the best predictors of grades, ideology also has impacts. Liberal students report higher college grades; yet conservative peers report higher high school grades. Further, socially conservative students enjoy higher than predicted high school GPAs, though the advantage erodes in college and disappears in elite colleges. We discuss implications

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