In what experts attribute to the rising influence of technology and the particular political issues surrounding modern-day society, the number of freshmen who say they are politically active and aware is at its highest level in 40 years, according to a recent report.
The Higher Education Research Institute at the UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies recently published the Freshman Survey, which is annually administered to entering college freshmen at more than 370 four-year colleges and universities nationwide.
This year, more than 270,000 freshmen took part in the survey.
In addition to increased political awareness, the survey indicates that freshman students tend to be less moderate and more polarized in their political ideologies.
Victor Saenz, coauthor of the published survey results, said he believes the rise in political awareness among college freshmen could be attributed to the advancing technology available to them today compared to previous classes of incoming students.
“The fact that students have grown up in a technologically advanced world has affected them, and information is readily available and shared and all of that tends to allow them to be engaged socially and politically,” he said.
Lesley Hollingsworth, a first-year theater student, said she finds that she and her peers are more able to express their political views as a result of the increased avenues of communication and expression that this new technology offers.
“Because we’re in a war, we’re personally affected by what’s happening around us,” she said.
“Lots of people have a new place to voice themselves through blogs and things of that nature.”
Sylvia Hurtado, professor and director of the Higher Education Research Institute and one of the coauthors of the Freshman Survey research, said students are increasingly reporting they are either liberal or conservative.
According to the survey, titled “The American Freshman ““ National Norms for 2006,” the number of students who reported they were liberal is at its highest level since 1975, with 28.4 percent of students.
An unprecedented 23.9 percent of students identified themselves as conservative, the highest level ever reached since the inception of the survey in 1966.
Hurtado said two of the issues that most divide liberal and conservative students are abortion and gay rights.
“People are taking stands and they’re realizing that these issues are dividing lines in terms of which direction the country is going,” Hurtado said. “Students in the middle of the road tend to lean to the liberal side of things, but they call themselves middle-of-the-road or moderate.”
Hollingsworth said she personally chooses to identify herself as moderate because she has a black-and-white stance on certain issues, but not on others.
“I would swing between my parents, one who is very liberal and the other who is very conservative,” she said. “I trust people who go issue-by-issue rather than just what their party says.”
Saenz said an issue that liberals and conservatives tend to disagree less on is affirmative action.
According to the Freshman Survey, 52.7 percent of conservative freshmen said they believe affirmative action in college admissions should be abolished, and 44.6 percent of their liberal counterparts agreed.
Saenz said the survey approached the issue of affirmative action based on political ideologies, though the issue may be approached from many other angles in the future.
“The issue is so multilayered that for us to interpret the student views on that issue is a little difficult,” Saenz said.
Saenz said in the future the survey may analyze the affirmative action question from other angles, such as socioeconomic and racial background.
Students say there are other possible explanations for the increase in political awareness among them and their classmates.
Alice Hang, a first-year undeclared student, said she believes the entertainment industry has greatly influenced her and others of her generation.
“A lot of political campaigns try to gear themselves toward the young audience,” she said. “Students are obsessed with the media and when people like Bill O’Reilly and P. Diddy and Tom Cruise go out there and tell us to vote, people are more likely to vote.”
Saenz said he is hopeful this increase in political awareness will be beneficial to the future of the nation’s democracy.
“Often young people are thought to be aloof and indifferent to the world, but our survey indicates that the future generation will be more socially and politically aware and will reinvigorate our democracy,” Saenz said. “These are our future leaders and workers.”
Hurtado said she and others at the research institute plan to publish the full results of the past 40 years in March.
“Every five years we publish a report on the overall trends,” Saenz said. “This is a much more historical approach in writing a narrative of how students have changed over time.”
Hurtado said the purpose of the survey is to understand how college students are changing and also to allow higher education administrators to learn more about their students so they can improve higher education.
“The areas we focused on were student political engagement, college access and finance, civic involvement and engagements in high school, racial composition of high school and neighborhood, and AP exams,” Hurtado said.
“The information is made available to the colleges and is used for institutional research so they can use it for planning and for informing administrators what is happening with their students.”
Hurtado said though some of the questions have been changed, many of the standard questions have been kept in the survey to gauge the way students’ answers have changed over the years.
Saenz said the survey typically takes around half an hour to complete and is typically administered at freshman orientation or early in the fall quarter. He said the results are collected by November and typically published in January.
Saenz said he and his colleagues also conduct research on students after their first year of college and a survey on graduating seniors, to gauge how they evolved through college.