This article from The Washington Monthly concludes that pro-Palestinian protests are occurring largely at elite colleges in the U.S., but does suffer from a lack of statistical analysis. Readers are thus forced to use the EB Test (Eyeball Test), which does seem to support that conclusion, but as a scientist I’d like to see some p values.
Click the headline to read; the magazine appears to be pretty nonpartisan, perhaps leaning a bit towards the Left:
Here’s the intro, which also explains why they use percentage of students with Pell Grants, which are grants given to medium- or low-income students, , and the grants don’t need to be repaid. Because the maximum Pell Grant is about $7,300 per year, Pell students tend to go to “non-elite” colleges that don’t charge very much. Thus the higher the percentage of Pell-funded students, the less “elite” the college is (remember, for schools like Harvard, the yearly tuition, fees, and costs of living are nearly $85.000 before financial aid is applied).
Here’s their intro:
. . . . one thing is not especially diverse about the protests: the campuses on which they’ve been happening.
Many of the most high-profile protests have occurred at highly selective colleges, like Columbia University. But since the national media is famously obsessed with these schools and gives far less attention to the thousands of other colleges where most Americans get their postsecondary educations, it’s hard to know how widespread the campus unrest has really been.
We at the Washington Monthly tried to get to the bottom of this question: Have pro-Palestinian protests taken place disproportionately at elite colleges, where few students come from lower-income families?
The answer is a resounding yes.
Using data from Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium and news reports of encampments, we matched information on every institution of higher education that has had pro-Palestinian protest activity (starting when the war broke out in October until early May) to the colleges in our 2023 college rankings. Of the 1,421 public and private nonprofit colleges that we ranked, 318 have had protests and 123 have had encampments.
By matching that data to percentages of students at each campus who receive Pell Grants (which are awarded to students from moderate- and low-income families), we came to an unsurprising conclusion: Pro-Palestinian protests have been rare at colleges with high percentages of Pell students. Encampments at such colleges have been rarer still. A few outliers exist, such as Cal State Los Angeles, the City College of New York, and Rutgers University–Newark. But in the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity. For example, at the 78 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on the Monthly’s list, 64 percent of the students, on average, receive Pell Grants. Yet according to our data, none of those institutions have had encampments and only nine have had protests, a significantly lower rate than non-HBCU schools.
They give four graphs to support the conclusion, which you can inspect using the EB test. Each point represents one college, and is colored blue if that college had no pro-Palestinian protest, red if there was a protest but no encampment, and green if there was an encampment. The first graph below shows that “elite” college with fewer students admitted also have a very low percentage of Pell-receiving students, while schools with high percentage of Pell students tend to be those with pretty high admission rates.
Note that nearly all schools with a Pell percentage of 60% or more students (that is, the less selective colleges) have blue dots, reflecting no protests, while those with lower (40% or less) Pell students have more bluered and green dots, indicating protests. The EB test suggests the hypothesis of “elite = protests” is right, but a statistical analysis would be better (for example, dividing the graph into quartiles along the X axis.
Here’s the notes on the second graph, which plots percentage of Pell students versus tuition and fees for only PRIVATE universities. Their notes:
When you separate out private and public colleges, the difference becomes even more stark, as the next chart demonstrates. At private colleges, protests have been rare, encampments have been rarer, and both have taken place almost exclusively at schools where poorer students are scarce and the listed tuition and fees are exorbitantly high.
. . . Out of the hundreds of private colleges where more than 25 percent of the students receive Pell Grants, only five colleges have had encampments.
You can see that by looking at the plethora of red and green dots (protests and encampments, respectively) at the upper left of the plot, which represents colleges with high tuition and fees and low percentage of Pell students. Using the EB test alone you see that there are more protests at less affordable colleges.
But what about public universities? The relationship isn’t as clear for public universities, though again there’s a deficit of protests at colleges with more then 50% Pells students. The authors have an explanation for the weaker relationship in public schools. As they say,
Protests and encampments have been more common at public colleges. This is in part because these colleges just have more students, and only a few students are needed for a protest. Even at public colleges, though, there is a clear relationship between having fewer Pell students and having had a protest or encampment, as the chart below illustrates.
The relationship is not as “clear” to me, which is why one needs statistics. Still, nearly all schools with less than 15% Pell students have had a protest or encampment.
Their tentative hypothesis from the above is this:
One possible explanation is that the more selective and wealthier colleges attract and encourage students who are more public minded and socially active.
To test that, they did the same correlation of percent pell students on the X axis versus the 2023 “service ranking” of schools, which are metrics used by the authors to determine the degree of “public mindedness and social activeness”; they incorporate things like “the number of students at a college who serve—before, during, or after attending the school—in AmeriCorps, the Peace Corps, ROTC, and local community nonprofits through work study; the percentage of students registered to vote and the degree to which the school makes student voting easier; and whether a school is listed on the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification, which recognizes colleges that document their broader public engagement efforts.”
The authors note that this relationship (graph below) shows the following:
. . . . schools that have high scores on the Washington Monthly service rankings (the bottom of the Y axis) are a bit more likely to also have had protests and encampments. But in general, the distribution looks more random, especially compared with the previous three charts. In other words, having high levels of student democratic engagement—at least according to the Monthly’s metrics, which are the most extensive we know of—is far less correlated with protests and encampments than admitting low percentages of poor and working-class students.
Well, yes, but again statistics would be nice here, though the plot does look a bit less dispositive that the several above.
The obvious conclusion, which the authors arrive at and I share: students at elite schools are poorer and “are just focused on other concerns.” As they say:
They may have off-campus jobs and nearby family members to see and take care of. They might sympathize with the protesters—a nationwide poll of college students in May found that 45 percent support the encampments, 24 percent oppose them, and 30 percent are neutral. But in the same poll, only 13 percent rated conflict in the Middle East as the issue most important to them. That was well behind health care reform (40 percent), educational funding and access (38 percent), and economic fairness and opportunity (37 percent). Students burdened with multiple responsibilities—like having to work a low-paying job to pay for college to get a better-paying job—are unlikely to devote what little free time they have to protesting about an issue they don’t see as a high priority.
They also float the idea that schools with more Pell grants are more Left-leaning, and thus more prone to having protests. This would rest on the notion that bigger schools that are less elite are also located in more conservative areas.
Regardless, the data above–though again I’d like statistical verification–show that the more elite a college is, the more likely it is to have pro-Palestinian protests. This of course jibes with “common wisdom”. It is the entitled students who protest the most.
Jerry where you write
“The obvious conclusion, which the authors arrive at and I share: students at elite schools are poorer and “are just focused on other concerns.””
I think you mean
“students at non-elite schools are poorer…”
While I think the Progressivism of the rich is a factor, we know that these protests are funded by outside groups. I would assume, therefore, that the funders are choosing where to direct their resources and that the big universities serve as the best fora for their agitation. Remember: These protests are not spontaneous.
Saw the tent graph on eXtwitter – glad to see a good treatment here.
“The obvious conclusion, which the authors arrive at and I share: students at elite schools are poorer and “are just focused on other concerns.””
Was that supposed to say “non-elite schools”?
What about, (putative typo corrected), students at non-elite schools are motivated to achieve economic success, not having been born with silver spoons in their mouths, and don’t want to be useful fools in a fashionable Marxist cause, (even if they might get laid, non-binary-like, in a tent), that might get them expelled and end up as the night kiosk attendant at the Husky truck-stop back home in Moose Jaw. (“I coulda been an engineer, Man!”)
You belong on Bill Maher’s show. Ty for the chuckle.
They also float the idea that schools with more Pell grants are more Left-leaning, and thus more prone to having protests.
Isn’t this reversed? More Pell grants—-> less protests
It would be interesting to see what other correlations pertain. Schools that pursue sexually-related charges against young men without due process? Schools that mandated (some still do) multiple COVID vaccines for healthy, COVID-recovered young men at extra risk of myocarditis? Ones that discipline students and faculty for various transgressions against “progressive” pieties? That cancel speakers guilty of wrongthink? That require allegiance to various DEI dogmas as a requirement for hiring and promotion? That have jumped aboard the “control misinformation” train? That have encampments and spineless administrators?
I agree with Jerry that statistical analysis would be useful, but it does seem, at least anecdotally, that we are dealing with a cluster of social beliefs that can quickly get divorced from any connections to sense, science, or liberalism traditionally understood. It is unsurprising that these beliefs take root most deeply in professions that deal primarily in words, that largely lack objective standards of performance, and that don’t design, create, or fix anything tangible. It also seems unsurprising that they seem to most afflict the highly-credentialed and higher socioeconomic classes. A plumber’s reputation and career advancement, for instance, have virtually nothing to do with what peers think of his political or other social views.
I’ve heard it said that all revolutions are, essentially, civil wars between opposing camps of the elite. Perhaps. But it is becoming increasingly clear that any successful effort at the national level against the advancing illiberalism and dogmas will require alliance with the working class. If we don’t find a way to bridge divides, then the “progressives” will either set back or destroy every institution dominated by the left, and Trumpism will increasingly capture the working class, who continue migrating to the right.
Nice argument.
“It is unsurprising that these beliefs take root most deeply in professions that deal primarily in words, that largely lack objective standards of performance, and that don’t design, create, or fix anything tangible [in the] highly-credentialed and higher socioeconomic classes.”
Also known as the professional managerial class, from which the gnostic wizards are anointed (as TP would perhaps say).
Protesting is a status symbol of the rich now who can afford the time off.
Or their cronies they pay to do it!
It’s the new internship.
Maybe.
I was going to refute that by saying that these protesters don’t want their name known, and hide their identity by wearing masks and not wanting to be “doxxed” for putting their names on pro-Hamas / anti-Israel letters, but then I realized that while this is true, they probably also proclaim their protesting chops to certain firms that value this belief system.
Students from affluent and comfortable backgrounds are more guilt-driven. They feel personally and institutionally responsible for the misery of the oppressed, and that by supporting and identifying with them the burden of their own privilege can be exorcised.
It would be interesting to find out what protesting students have for a major vs non-protestors.
I also hope that we can get over the whole “elite” university designation. Students can get a good education anywhere (or fail anywhere).
Yes I hope that’s true. I’m a professor at Pretty Good Suburban Commuter University, where our reputation is that we try harder than our much bigger cross-town rivals at World Famous Urban Land Grant University. Nobody is getting laid in a tent (non-binary or any other style, per Leslie @5) here at PGSCU, but I hope everybody can get a decent education at a modest cost. Decency & modesty seem like good aspirations these days.