Published by The Hechinger Report
…
This has now become an important consideration for college-bound students from all backgrounds and beliefs.
Students have long picked schools based on their academic reputations and social life. But with campuses in the crosshairs of the culture wars, many students are now also taking stock of attacks on diversity, course content, and speech and speakers from both ends of the political spectrum. They’re monitoring hate crimes, anti-LGBTQ legislation, state abortion laws and whether students like them —Black, rural, military veterans, LGBTQ or from other backgrounds — are represented and supported on campus.
“There’s no question that what’s happening at the state level is directly affecting these students,” said Alyse Levine, founder and CEO of Premium Prep, a private college admissions consulting firm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. When they look at colleges in various states now, she said, “There are students who are asking, ‘Am I really wanted here?’ ”
For some students on both sides of the political divide, the answer is no. In the chaotic new world of American colleges and universities, many say they feel unwelcome at certain schools, while others are prepared to shut down speakers and report faculty with whose opinions they disagree.
It’s too early to know how much this trend will affect where and whether prospective students end up going to college, since publicly available enrollment data lags real time. But there are early clues that it’s having a significant impact.
One in four prospective students has already ruled out a college or university for consideration because of the political climate in its state, according to a survey by the higher education consulting firm Art & Science Group.
…
Sixty percent of prospective students of all backgrounds say new state restrictions on abortion would at least somewhat influence where they choose to go to college, a separate poll by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation found. Of these, eight in 10 say they would prefer to go to a state with greater access to reproductive health services. (Lumina is among the funders of The Hechinger Report.)
“We have many young women who will not look at certain states,” said Levine. One of her own clients backed out of going to a university in St. Louis after Missouri banned almost all abortions in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, she said.
Institutions in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Texas are the most likely to be knocked off the lists of liberal students, according to the Art & Science Group survey, while conservative students avoid California and New York.
One in eight high school students in Florida say they won’t go to a public university in their own state because of its education policies, a separate poll, by the college ranking and information website Intelligent.com, found.
With 494 anti-LGBTQ laws proposed or adopted this year, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, prospective students who are LGBTQ and have experienced significant harassment because of it are nearly twice as likely to say they don’t plan to go to college at all than students who experienced lower levels of harassment, according to a survey by GLSEN, formerly the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network.
“You are attacking kids who are already vulnerable,” said Javier Gomez, an LGBTQ student in his first year at Miami Dade College. “And it’s not just queer students. So many young people are fed up.”
…