How college majors shape political ideology

What students study in college shapes not only their career prospects but also their political views, according to a new working paper from the Social Science Research Network.

After examining surveys of around 300,000 students across 477 U.S. colleges, the study finds that majors matter and are a significant predictor of the political leanings students adopt during college, even after accounting for their pre-college political views, intended majors, and demographics.

The results are consistent and striking. Relative to the natural sciences, students who major in the social sciences and humanities become more left-leaning over the course of their college careers, particularly on cultural issues. By contrast, students who major in economics and business tend to become more conservative, especially on economic policy questions such as taxation and health care.

First, relative to the natural sciences, studying the social sciences and humanities tends to make students more left-leaning, whereas studying economics and business makes them more right-leaning. Second, the rightward effects of economics and business come from shifts on economic policy issues (taxation, healthcare), whereas the leftward effects of the humanities and social sciences come from shifts on cultural issues (LGBTQ, race). Third, these effects extend to behavior: the social sciences and humanities increase activism, while economics and business increase the emphasis on financial success. Fourth, the effects operate through teaching rather than socialization or earnings expectations.

College majors, in short, are not ideologically neutral; they are systematically shaping students’ political views and how they understand public policy.

What drives these differences?

Notably, the study finds little evidence that these shifts are driven by peer influence. Instead, a student’s ideological change appears to be more strongly linked to curricula and faculty instruction. What is taught — and how it is taught — matters more than just classmates’ beliefs and socialization. This reinforces longstanding concerns that curriculum design and faculty norms, particularly in the humanities and social sciences, drive students’ political views.

While selection plays a role too, as students tend to pick areas of study that align with their interests, values, or beliefs, the study finds that students in different majors end up with different political attitudes, even when they started out similar. This goes back to the above point that coursework, professors, etc. within the major itself have a real, causal influence on students’ political attitudes.

Implications

The findings challenge the claim that higher education is politically neutral. Even in the absence of overt political messaging, this study shows that the structure of academic programs appears to nudge students in predictable ideological directions.

The study also suggests that higher education may intensify political polarization. Because students tend to select majors aligned with their existing beliefs, academic fields increasingly function as ideological silos. Rather than exposing students to competing viewpoints, universities often sort them into similar intellectual environments, reinforcing division rather than encouraging civic pluralism.

Finally, the study suggests that encouraging enrollment in majors aligned with free-market principles, such as business or economics, could help counterbalance the ideological gap between college graduates and non-graduates, as it could weaken or even flip the “college makes you more liberal” effect.

Policy takeaways

The findings of this study raise serious concerns about curricular balance and viewpoint diversity in American higher education. In many institutions, general education requirements are heavily weighted toward courses that reflect a narrow range of political assumptions, particularly in social theory and cultural studies. Policymakers and university leaders should prioritize curricular reform that ensures students encounter competing intellectual traditions across disciplines and degree programs. Additionally, incorporating department-level climate surveys to help identify whether certain fields discourage open debate or dismiss alternative perspectives could also help improve institutional transparency.

Finally, because ideological sorting is partly driven by who attends college and what they study, expanding and elevating high-quality alternative pathways to four-year degrees remains essential. Apprenticeships, career and technical education, and other skill-based pathways tend emphasize skills formation over worldview formation and bring together individuals from more diverse backgrounds. American Experiment has written much on the many well-paying, lucrative career pathways available outside the traditional four-year degree route, and elevating these pathways would also help reduce the increasingly politicized divide between “college-educated” and “non-college-educated” Americans.

Reforming higher education will not be quick or easy, particularly given the incentive structures that reward ideological conformity. Students and families still interested in pursuing a four-year degree should be clear-eyed about the ideological environment of modern academia and take advantage of available resources to navigate it thoughtfully.