Journalists and college professors tend to have left-of-center political views, but not for the reason some people think. People rarely start with a particular political view then decide to enter an occupation where they can promote it. Far more often, what happens is that some people enter occupations that require being well-educated and well-informed, with good critical thinking skills. This tends to go hand-in-hand with going beyond simplistic views of all kinds, and it is true of many occupations, from architects to zoologists.
You can prove this for yourself. Find people on Facebook you don’t know but who give their education and their political views. Make a table with columns for politics (left/right) and rows for education (high/low) – in any field of study. Put one tic mark per person in a cell. Most will be in the high left or low right cells.
There are certainly many well-informed critical thinkers without formal higher education. But being self-taught takes a great deal of time and effort, so fewer people take that route.
And not every highly educated person is left of center. Probability is not certainty. There are people at every educational level with all sorts of political views. But as a general rule, right of center views tend to be associated with simplistic slogans like “make America great again” and preposterous positions like “socialism is bad but the state should own the liquor stores.” Without adequate defenses one can fall for stuff like that.
DAVID HAGNER
Concord