Does higher education politicise today’s students?

Through a longitudinal study of UK undergraduates, the project will explore the impact, if any, of higher education on students’ political views, knowledge and behaviour.

Higher education (HE) is widely assumed to have politicising effects on students. In the UK, recent political science theorising has argued HE expansion has re-shaped political divides, with an increasingly salient division between graduates and non-graduates. Similarly, over recent years, several commentators have suggested that universities have driven a left-wing agenda and pressured students to conform.

However, despite the strength of these claims, our knowledge about the politicising effects of HE is poor. It is unclear whether HE does affect the political knowledge, views and behaviour of students, the nature of any such changes, and the underlying mechanisms. Moreover, there is a lack of conceptual clarity in this area. While discussions of ‘politicisation’ often imply HE plays an inappropriate role, several bodies of scholarship, and indeed HE institutions themselves, assume HE should shape students’ values, whether with respect to environmental sustainability, social justice, or social responsibility.

To address these challenges, the project has four objectives:

1. To generate new knowledge about the extent to which HE exerts influence on students’ knowledge of politics, and their political views and behaviours, and the nature of any such influence.
2. To enhance understanding of the mechanisms that underpin these patterns (in political knowledge, views and behaviour), attentive to any differences by academic discipline, institution attended, and the social characteristics of students.
3. To develop theorisations of HE’s role(s) in informing students’ political knowledge, views and behaviours.
4. To influence debate about the politicisation of students, within the HE sector and beyond.

The project will undertake a mixed method longitudinal study of undergraduate students at four English HE institutions, to track any changes in their political knowledge, views and behaviours over the course of their degree programme. Interviews with HE staff and policy actors will also be used to explore their views about HE’s role(s) in developing students’ political knowledge, views and behaviours.

The project, and the knowledge it generates, has widespread application within social science. In particular, as the first in-depth investigation into whether and how HE influences students’ politics, this study will enhance our understanding of contemporary political divides in England. This addresses an under-explored assumption in recent prominent political science theorising, as well as being of interest to scholars from education and sociology.

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