Sam Thau

In a new @siepr.bsky.social WP, @gideonmoore.bsky.social, @jdlight.bsky.social and I document a small but broad shift towards more political, more liberal courses across nearly 1,000 US colleges 2000-present. We then study how students + faculty shape political content. A thread (1/N)...

Students consistently preferred somewhat more political courses. Preferences over slant changed over time: demand for liberal content rose through the 2010s, peaked around 2020, and has partially reversed since. (11/N)

siepr.stanford.eduThe Political Content of College CoursesOther

TL;DR: College courses have become modestly more political and more liberal since 2000. The changes are small relative to persistent differences across fields, and both instructor-specific factors and student demand matter. See the full WP here: siepr.stanford.edu/publications... (12/12)

After moving, instructors close roughly 35–40% of the gap between the political content of their old and new institutions. The remaining 60–65% persists with the instructor, suggesting instructor-specific factors account for most of the cross-sectional variation. (9/N)

Second, we ask whether student demand helps explain these patterns. Course enrollment alone is not enough (popular instructors may respond to student demand by changing what they teach) so we use instructors’ prior course content to isolate variation in current offerings. (10/N)

Within the same institution and field, courses have become about 0.15 SD more political and 0.13 SD more liberal since 2000. The changes are broad-based, but modest relative to the much larger persistent differences across fields today (7/N)

What drives these differences? First, we follow instructors who move between institutions to separate persistent instructor-specific course characteristics from the influence of the institutional environment. (8/N)

An important note: these are positive statements, not normative ones. Our measure has no notion of truth, so nothing here separates "bias" from "correctness"—e.g., increasingly common classes on climate change code as liberal, but reflect scientific consensus. (5/N)

Most courses contain little political content or slant, but fields differ sharply. Math is overwhelmingly apolitical; Ethnic/Cultural Studies contains much more liberal content; and Law has a notable conservative tail. (6/N)

A basic measurement problem: a course can be politically neutral because it discusses politics from both sides, or because it discusses no politics at all. Calculus shouldn’t count as ideologically “moderate” in the same sense as a politically engaged but balanced course. (3/N)