coffee grounds

Liberals in the liberal arts and sciences

Juan Cole has a perceptive post on the <sarcasm>shocking </sarcasm> news that lots of faculty members vote Democratic.

The key paragraph to my mind is this:

The most logical explanation for any political bias in some parts of the professoriate in my view is that the sort of persons with the skills to be in a major academic liberal arts department could also be successful in business, lobbying, law, advertising and other well-paying professions. And it is the corporate world and its lobbying appendages that have the marked bias, to the Right. Someone who has academic skills but is a Republican would just have enormous opportunities and could easily become a multi-millionnaire.

That gets it about right. The people who self-select into becoming academics are people who have chosen to spend an additional 5-10 years in graduate school earning $10,000-$30,000 a year, and then enter a career with a salary progression that starts at $35,000 and goes to $100,000 for most people (sure, there are people getting $100,000 + but they are a fraction of the total post-secondary teaching corps)

Nothing random about that process. Nothing surprising about the fact that it pops up more Democratic voters here, and other labour / social democratic party voters elsewhere.

Posted by robe0419 at November 28, 2004 07:05 PM | TrackBack