Inside Higher Ed: The Conservative Pipeline Problem
Colleges have been increasingly competing to offer “family friendly” policies — in the hopes of attracting the best academic talent from a pool of Ph.D.’s that includes both more women than ever before as well as many men who take parenting responsibilities seriously. A new study suggests that such policies may be important for another group that believes its needs aren’t fully addressed in academe: conservatives.
The study — “Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don’t Get Doctorates” — argues that the much debated minority status for conservatives in higher education may be the result of differing priorities of graduating college seniors of different political persuasions. The study presents evidence that conservatives are significantly more likely than liberals — at the point when college students decide whether to apply to graduate school — to value raising a family and having money. In contrast, liberals at that point in their lives are significantly more likely to value writing original works.
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