Published by Inside Higher Ed
For a growing number of students, choosing what college to attend is becoming something of a political referendum. Survey data released today from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation show that state policies—especially on hot-button issues like reproductive rights and gun control—can have a big impact on where prospective students enroll.
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Zach Hyrnowski, Gallup’s research consultant on higher education, said such policy issues still take a back seat to more immediate factors in students’ college decisions, such as cost and academic reputation. But more and more, “they’re not as far behind as you’d think,” he said.
“Is leniency on campus gun policies, for instance, an enrollment risk?” he asked. “I think it’s certainly becoming a relevant question.”
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Mary Ziegler, a legal scholar at the University of California Davis who specializes in reproductive health law, said that in the wake of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022, conservative states have passed laws attempting to codify increasingly extreme abortion restrictions. For the next generation of college applicants, especially women, reliable access to reproductive care is highly prized in a storm of fluctuating policies.
“The landscape is changing so rapidly, and that uncertainty is scary, especially since college is when people often become sexually active,” she said. “It’s not surprising that it’s influencing college decisions.”
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David Strauss, a principal of Art & Science Group, a consulting and research firm that advises colleges on enrollment issues, said the data is not yet conclusive on that question. While the Gallup respondents show a clear preference for colleges in states with strict gun control laws and liberal reproductive health policies, Strauss said there’s a difference between preference and action—a gap illustrated by the fact that many Americans who support abortion rights vote for politicians who repeatedly legislate against them.
He believes the issue will only become more important to prospective students, and that colleges that aren’t thinking much about it yet should start doing so. The Art & Science Group released a report last year which found that 1 in 4 college applicants said they completely ruled out certain colleges “solely due to the politics, policies, or legal situation in the state.”
“This is going to have an impact up and down the postsecondary food chain,” Strauss said. “It’s going to be in the college’s best interest to find a way to legally protect the rights and resources that their students value regardless of where they’re located. And besides that, it’s what they owe to their students.”
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