A Liberal Education: The Social and Political Impact of the Modern University

· Cambridge University Press
Ebook
359
Pages
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About this ebook

Enlisting a natural experiment, global surveys, and historical data, this book examines the university's evolution and its contemporary impact. Its authors conduct an unprecedented big-data comparative study of the consequences of higher education on ideology, democratic citizenship, and more. They conclude that university education has a profound effect on social and political attitudes across the world, greater than that registered by social class, gender, or age. A university education enhances political trust and participation, reduces propensities to crime and corruption, and builds support for democracy. It generates more tolerant attitudes toward social deviance, enhances respect for rationalist inquiry and scientific authority, and usually encourages support for Leftist parties and movements. It does not nurture support for taxation, redistribution, or the welfare state, and may stimulate opposition to these policies. These effects are summarized by the co-authors as liberal, understood in its classic, nineteenth-century meaning.

About the author

Brendan Apfeld is a Lead Data Scientist for CVS Health. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Texas at Austin. His research on comparative politics and the politics of education has appeared in journals such as The Journal of Politics and Political Science & Research Methodology.

Emanuel Coman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Trinity College Dublin, where he teaches and researches party politics, elections, and local politics. His work has been featured in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, European Journal of Political Research, West European Politics and Electoral Studies.

John Gerring is Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His teaching and research centers on methodology and comparative politics. He is co-editor of the Cambridge University Press series Strategies for Social Inquiry, and serves as co-Principal Investigator of Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) and the Global Leadership Project (GLP).

Stephen Jessee is Professor of Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His research studies political ideology and other latent traits as well as voting behavior, legislative politics, and the Supreme Court. He is the author of Ideology and Spatial Voting in American Elections (2012).

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