Students and politics in the UK: A comparison of students’ views and staffs’ perspectives

The question of whether, and how, universities act as politicising institutions is currently highly debated globally. Many scholars and politicians have engaged in the discussion about the extent to which higher education institutions are responsible for significant shifts in students’ political views and behaviours. However, we still know little about the mechanisms through which such influence may be exerted, or even whether higher education is causal at all.

In this talk, we will present preliminary findings of an ongoing study in the United Kingdom (2025-2028), which is funded by the ESRC (“Does higher education politicise today’s students?”). So far, we have surveyed students’ political views at the beginning of their studies and have conducted interviews with representatives of sector-level organisations, student union presidents, and university senior managers and teaching staff.

On the basis of this data, we will present some preliminary results about students’ attitudes (e.g. right-left; liberal-authoritarian; populism), and the extent to which they differ across institutions and subject areas. We will also explore the normative views of other social actors – for example, about whether higher education should be a space to discuss political issues, and the appropriate role for teaching staff.