College campuses are a lot more moderate than you think

The Chronicle of Higher Education crunched 50 years of data to better understand who is going to college — and the findings might surprise those who assume universities are liberal hotbeds. "The perception that four-year colleges are only for liberal students may partly be a vestige of the Vietnam era," the Chronicle explains. "Beginning in the late 1970s, similar percentages of freshmen identified as liberal or conservative, with more than half describing themselves as 'middle of the road.'"

In a chart of the findings, which can be found here, just over 20 percent of college freshmen today are conservative or far-right while just over 30 percent are liberal or far-left. Just under 50 percent are "middle of the road."

Students' interest in politics has been on the decline, although freshmen have trended more liberal recently, "perhaps returning to a dichotomy similar to that of the 1960s and '70s," the Chronicle writes. Explore all of the findings and peruse graphics of the data here.

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