Changing Minds: How Academic Fields Shape Political Attitudes

• In Event: Causes and Effects of Political Polarization in Higher Education

Abstract

This study examines how academic fields shape political attitudes, using data on 310,000 students who entered 477 American colleges between 1990 and 2015. The main analysis employs a conditional-on-observables approach, leveraging unusually rich pre-college controls. Results indicate that choosing a business or economics major instead of humanities or social sciences reduces liberal self-placement by 0.22 standard deviations (approximately 10 percentage points). To further support the causal interpretation, a complementary analysis exploits college-level expansions in specific fields to construct a quasi-experimental design. This analysis reveals that increases in the availability of business and economics programs reduce liberal self-placement, partly by influencing major choices, thereby reinforcing the causal interpretation of our findings. Furthermore, findings indicate that majors affect policy attitudes on issues such as taxation and abortion, suggesting impacts beyond ideological self-placement. An investigation of potential mechanisms finds no evidence of peer effects, implying that academic content or faculty interactions may be the primary channels. Finally, accounting for self-selection into majors reveals that fields of study contribute to political polarization and the observed gender gap in political attitudes among college graduates.

Author

• Matan Kolerman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  Presenting Author