Undergraduate student experience and its effect on political identity
Abstract
A person's political identity is shaped and evolved from influencing factors such as family, peers, political party, and education. A person's political identity impacts the way they vote and the attitudes and behaviors they have toward the government. Education is often attributed to shifting a person's political ideology to the left but a gap in the literature exists as evidence for this assentation. This paper addresses the influence of higher education on a person's political identity by quantifying any shift that may occur. I expect to find higher education shifts a person's political identity more liberally from where the person's political identity stood in high school. A pilot survey study is conducted on college students to assess the impact of their college educational experience on their political views.