There are a lot of left wing professors out there and you’ve read about many of them here at College Insurrection.

Yet according to a study cited by Scott Jaschik of Inside Higher Ed, it’s the students who make colleges more liberal.

Stop Blaming Professors

Part of the conservative critique of higher education is that liberal professors indoctrinate students, turning middle-of-the-road students into Young Democrats (or Young Socialists).

But a new study suggests that it’s time to stop blaming professors (of any political leaning) for any leftward tilt that college students may show (and the study acknowledges that many do lean that way over the course of their college years).

The influence is coming from students themselves. In fact, the study says, the more engaged students are with faculty members and academics, the more their views moderate toward the center. But the more students become engaged in student activities, the more the liberals become more committed as liberals and conservatives become more committed as conservatives.

The study is by Kyle Dodson, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California at Merced, and it appears in Professors and Their Politics, a collection of research papers and essays, about to appear from Johns Hopkins University Press.

In his study, Dodson used data from the Freshman Survey and the College Senior Survey, both conducted by the University of California at Los Angeles Higher Education Research Institute on students attending four-year colleges. The former study is actually about pre-college attitudes as students are surveyed before enrolling.