There is a very reasonable case to be made that the leftist bias inherent in faculty and staff at America’s institutions of higher learning contributed significantly to President Obama’s reelection success.

Via Instapundit:  Shane McGonigal adds further evidence to this assertion, as he crunches the numbers on political donations made during the 2012 election cycle.

Four of the top ten organizations whose staff donated to President Obama’s reelection campaign were universities, data released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) reveals.

The University of California (UC) represented the single largest employee group to donate to President Obama’s campaign in 2012, funneling $1,092,906 to assist the President in his bid to gain reelection. That number includes the university’s PACs, individual members or employees, and employee’s immediate families.

In comparison, Microsoft’s employees placed a distant second on the list, donating $761,343.

Three other universities also earned spots on the top ten list, with their faculty and staff giving large sums of money to the Obama campaign.

Harvard was number five in donations overall, giving $602,992 to the President’s campaign. Stanford donated $473,372 putting them at seventh on the list and Columbia donated $411,894 leaving the Ivy League university ninth in contributions.

No institutions of higher learning registered as even one of the top twenty organizations to donate to Mitt Romney’s campaign.

The data was gathered by OpenSecrets.org using information from the FEC.

Chris Harrington, spokesperson for the University of California, pointed out in an interview with Campus Reform on Wednesday that the university is not technically responsible for the donations of its employees.

“The University of California is not a top contributor,” said Harrington. “I don’t keep track of our employee donations. I haven’t seen the data from Open Secrets and I don’t review the FEC data.”

In the 2008 election cycle, the UC’s employees were also the number one contributor to the Obama campaign, donating $1,648,685