College Applicants Are Ruling Out States Due To Political Views

One in four college applicants are ruling out colleges because they are located in states they think are not in line with their own political and social views. In addition, this weeding out happens early on in the college choice process, with 64% saying that they eliminated these schools when first deciding what colleges they were interested in. This information is from a recently released report from Art & Science Group.

Another interesting factor here is that the finding is across all political groups and no likely to be more of an issue with conservative than liberal students, or even moderates. The reasons differ, but the prevalence remains the same. The top reason for conservative students was a perception that the state was “too democratic” while the top reasons (the liberal students listed more issues as important that the conservative students did) for liberals were being too conservative on “abortion & reproductive rights,” “LGBTQ+ laws” and “too lenient on guns.”

So, what are these states? For the conservative students, they were California and New York. For the liberal students, they were Texas, Florida, Arkansas, and Tennessee.

What this might mean, and this is only a “might” since there are so many other factors in play, is that we could see more polarization of student political views in these six states in which California and New York have even an even larger proportion of liberal students and Texas, Florida, Arkansas, and Tennessee have an even larger proportion of conservative students.

What the report did not address is the home state of the high-school students answering the survey and if that might factor into college choice. Most students go to college close to home. Are the students who are considering state political views a factor living in more liberal states and would probably stay in that state for college anyway? That is, is the New York liberal-minded student going to stay in New York for college anyway, regardless of thinking that going to college in Florida is not for them?