Almost 40 percent of students identify as LGBTQ at liberal arts colleges, according to a study by a center-right think tank that researches partisanship in academic and scientific fields.
“Liberal arts colleges are the least politically diverse. Many have almost no conservatives, and thus very low viewpoint diversity. But they have high sexual diversity, at nearly 40 percent LGBT,” stated the report by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, titled “Diverse and Divided: A Political Demography of American Elite Students.”
Overall, 23 percent of American college students identify as LGBTQ. That percentage is close to the results of a Gallup poll, in which 21% of Generation Z identified as LGBT ten months ago.
Far fewer older people identify as LGBT. The overall percentage of Americans identifying as LGBT was only 7% in the Gallup poll.
The study relies on numbers from the non-partisan Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Its nationwide campus expression surveys from last year and 2020.
Professor Eric Kaufmann at CSPI used FIRE’s survey data from 57,000 undergraduates at 159 top American colleges and universities.
“The trend toward LGBT identification among young people, which has seen a threefold expansion since 2008, encompasses both university and non-university young people, white as well as minority,” Kaufmann said. “That said, those who identify as ‘very liberal’ are substantially more likely to say they are LGBT and white left-wing activists are extremely likely to do so, with some 70% of very liberal women who support shouting down offensive speakers identifying as LGBT.”
Kaufmann linked the higher LGBTQ percentages at liberal arts colleges with their disproportionately liberal and female student bodies, while also noting that those factors, by themselves, could not fully explain the cause.
The study observes that most students identify as LGBTQ at Oberlin, Wellesley, and Smith College: 70% at Smith, 61% at Wellesley, and 51% at Oberlin. Wellesley and Smith are women’s colleges.
“These are high numbers. However it’s important to remember that much of this lies in female bisexuality, and that over 60 percent of female bisexuals report only male sexual partners in the past five years. So much of what is going on concerns people with intermittent same-sex attraction self-labelling as LGBT,” Kaufmann inotes. The percentages are a big increase for Wellesley, which recorded only 38% of students identifying as LGBT in 2016. That’s a 23% increase in just 5 years.
