One of the most concerning aspects of today’s education is the almost constant progressive indoctrination on American College campuses.

According to Minding the Campus writer Mark Bauerlein, liberal professors may find they need to spend less time on indoctrination if the findings of a recent survey are true.

One of the main findings of this year’s American Freshman Survey Is the drift of 2012 first-year college students toward the political center.  The report collects 2008 and 2012 results and finds that “in one significant point of comparison, students moved toward the center in self-perceived political orientation, with the ‘middle-of-the-road’ category growing from 43.3% in 2008 to 47.5% in 2012.

More Liberal by 2016? 

Moreover, on other issues, liberal attitudes actually went up.  Agreement with “Abortion Should Be Legal” climbed from 58.2 percent in 2008 to 61.1 percent in 2012, while support for “Preferential Treatment in College Admissions” for those of “social disadvantage” inched up from 39.5 percent in 08 to 41.9 percent in 12.  Also, 64.6 percent of them still believe that “Wealthy people should pay a larger share of taxes than they do now,” 75 percent of them support same-sex marriage, and 67.8 percent agree that “College should prohibit racist/sexist speech on campus.”  Nothing in these findings suggest that the youth vote will be any less Democratic in 2016 than it was in 2008 and 2012.

So why do we see a significant shift to “middle-of-the-road” identification?  For a reason that should keep conservatives up at night.  Instead of youths moving away from liberalism, liberalism has moved steadily toward centrist status, at least among the young.  Same-sex marriage isn’t a left-wing position–it’s a moderate one, and so is support for affirmative action, national health coverage, speech codes, and abortion rights.  Those who oppose them appear ever further on the Right, ever more ideological, while those who favor them appear ever more at the center and less ideological.

This puts conservatism among the young and on campus at an initial and permanent disadvantage.  It’s like the network news back in 1974, when Walter Cronkite could appear neutral and normative, Dan Rather a thoughtful and reasoned, if mildly liberal, reporter.  Liberalism is the natural way to be, conservatism an insertion of politics into an otherwise normal situation.  Of course, most 18-year-olds don’t care much about politics–only 34.5 percent of them agreed that “Keeping up to date with political affairs” is important–and they have acquired their opinions mainly by socio-cultural osmosis, heeding the implicit values of Harry Potter and ESPN and prime-time TV, not the explicit positions in op-ed pages and Senate hearings.