I often hear people say that Purdue In W. Lafayette Indiana is conservative as far as public universities go. Although it is to the left of me (I consider it very moderate) it certainly isn't the University of Wisconsin Madison or IU. Is this because it is a land grant college with agriculture and engineering? What other factors come into play? What other public universities have a conservative or moderate bent?
Is it a general trend in the US that agricultural universities are conservative?
I work at a agricultural university in Sweden and there seems to have been some kind of "cultural revolution" around 2000 or so. Before that there was a tilt towards farmer-ish males interested in technology, since then the trend has been towards people with an environmental interest, mostly females. The European Election result from the precinct covering the student housing next to campus was quite extreme with the Greens and Feminist Initiative gaining half of the vote. Is there any similar trend in the US?
No, not really. There has not been a shift of that kind.
Its starting to occur though; the recent growth that has been occurring in CALS majors has been almost entirely supported by new undergraduate programs in environmental science/policy.
Also, interestingly enough, it would seem that in Mississippi and Alabama, the areas around the land-grant institutions (Mississippi State and Auburn) are more liberal than the areas around the flagship, liberal-arts schools (Ole Miss and Bama). In the case of Mississippi, it probably has to do with Starkville's location within in the MS Black Belt, and Auburn has a high% of foreign-born population even for an engineering school, IIRC.
