Via Inside Higher Ed, the Center for Responsive Politics has a new report on political contributions by academics
So far in the '08 election cycle, people who work for institutions of higher education have given more than $7 million to federal candidates, parties and committees, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Nearly 60 percent of that money has gone to presidential candidates. The industry's favorite, Barack Obama, has raked in nearly $1.5 million in the campaign's first six months, followed by Hillary Clinton with almost $940,000.
Seventy-six percent of the education industry's total federal contributions for '08 has gone to Democrats, on par with the industry's partisanship in the last two election cycles. Perhaps more surprising than the industry's party split is its sheer size: Education was the eighth-largest industry in terms of all federal campaign contributions in 2004 and the 13th largest in 2006, meaning that in the last two election cycles, college employees contributed more to politicians than the oil and gas industry, which ranked 16th in both cycles. For 2008, CRP ranks the education industry as No. 14, still ahead of big-givers such as oil and gas, general contractors, the computer and Internet industry, electric utilities and the pharmaceutical industry.
(I love the use of "industry" to describe academia, by the way. It implies a degree of cohesiveness and common purpose that suggests the author has never been to a faculty meeting...)
That partisan split sounds really impressive-- those academics sure are a liberal bunch-- but here's another number to keep in mind: According to fundraising numbers from the CRP, Democrats have raised $178,351,385 so far, while Republicans have raised $118,084,242. $178 million out of a total of $296 million is 60%.
So, while it's notable that 76% of academic contributions favor Democrats, bear in mind that 60% of everybody's contributions favor the Democrats. Maybe us Ivory Tower types aren't as out of tough with the mainstream as some people would have you think.
(Of course, the split in academic contributions was similar in the 2004 election, according to the CRP release, and there, they were on the short side of a 53-47 split. So it's not that academics are more in tune with the public, it's really that the general public are catching up to the correct views held by academics...)
Really, the only surprising thing about this is the relative magnitude of the academic contribution, though given the number of college faculty in the country, and the fact that professors as a group are probably more politically engaged than employees of many other industries, maybe it's not such a big shock. The partisan divide doesn't surprise me at all-- if anything, I'm surprised it's not bigger.
When one of the two major political parties regards the entire enterprise of academia with barely-disguised contempt, well, it's not too surprising to find that academics overwhelmingly support the other party. We're not the most socially gifted lot, but we're not stupid...
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Actually, Industry is not that far off. There is no great cooperation in the commercial sector and it is strongly directed towards the accumulation of money, or at least of money flow. Sounds like the college environment without material goods.
I'll never understand why this matters or what this is supposed to prove. Why should academics be supporting anti-intellectuals who will cut off their funding? Why should there be balance anyways? Academics are intelligent, well-educated, and tend to be politically active people who are for obvious reasons interested in positive and progressive change. If they're liberal, that should simply tell us something about the politics of a person with good judgment.
Does anyone ever do a survey like this for other "industries?" Would anyone ever make a stink like this if, say, 65% of banker or mining exec donations went to Republicans?
jeffk--good points. As to its purpose, I think it's supposed to prove that academics are all evil liberals who should be fired, or something, for skewing students' opinions away from the Good and Right-Wing (since students never develop their own opinions). It's probably directed at those who get all their information and opinions from retrograde talk radio.
"Education was the eighth-largest industry in terms of all federal campaign contributions in 2004 and the 13th largest in 2006..."
As opposed to that episode of Sliders where academics were treated the way our world treats sports and film celebrities. "Oh, professor, would you autograph my textbook?"
Captain C, follow that link Chad gave you (the one to opensecrets.org) and look at the giving to presidential candidates by the "gambling" and "tobacco" industries, or "hedge funds". Most amusing.
For an opinion from the ed side, take a look at Sherman Dorn's blog:
http://www.shermandorn.com/mt/archives/000994.html
As a historian and statistician, he points out how the total gets biased by the giving from a small group of institutions.
Sherman also points to another blog that critiques the conventional wisdom by noting that there this "industry" includes 3 million K-12 teachers, 1.2 million faculty, and probably a million or more non-teaching employees. In contrast, oil and gas have only 80,000 employees. On that basis, per capita, education giving is relatively modest.
"... blog that critiques the conventional wisdom by noting that there this 'industry' includes 3 million K-12 teachers, 1.2 million faculty, and probably a million or more non-teaching employees. In contrast, oil and gas have only 80,000 employees."
The education industry is a portion of the Knowledge Industry which, since somewhere after 1950, accounts directly or indirectly for half the employees in the USA. Herman Kahn ("The Year 2000") referred to this as the major part of Quarternary employment (primary = logging, mining, farming, fishing and such that get raw resources; secondary being sawmills, refining, milling and canning, and other consumer products; tertiary being the infrastructure of that consumer culture, with transportation, marketing, and the like). Quaternary also includes government and science and the arts.
Another part of the Knowledge Industry is books, magazines, newspapers, film, and television. Two words: "media consolidation." Or "Rupert Murdoch."
The book industry, in which my parents both worked, and the science fiction magazines, are a small part of the Paper and Wood Pulp group of indusries, smaller than the Toilet Paper industry.
In the kickback-riddled Pasadena Unified School district, a party for vendors (chalk, paper, textbooks) is thrown once a year. The line item in the budget for that party is larger than the line item for buying textbooks for students.
American public education is broken. Not bent, broken. If the consumer of the product of public school is the employer, then it follows as I've seen from the corporate side that remedial education by the employer costs more than the taxes for the entire public school system.
The paradox is that the best of American education is as good as the best anywhere in the world. It is the mean and median here that suck. Throwing dollars at this crisis has not solved it. "No Child Left Behind" has, if anything, made it worse.
Anyone who works in the Knowledge Industry has an opinion. Of such opinions, political statements and movements emerge.