The link between educational attainment and socio-political values is well-established. In Britain today, university graduates, on average, have considerably more liberal cultural attitudes and somewhat less liberal economic attitudes than non-graduates. 

But does studying at university really cause graduates to develop distinctive attitudinal profiles?  

This is a question that has preoccupied social scientists for decades and is notoriously difficult to answer, because the relationship between educational attainment and socio-political attitudes is extremely complex.

Elizabeth Simon, a postdoctoral researcher in British Politics within the Mile End Institute at Queen Mary, University of London, has conducted a study to better identify the causal effect of university study on British individuals’ cultural and economic attitudes in the period 1994-2020, using the unique household structure of the British Household Panel Study and Understanding Society data.

See more on the John Smith Centre blog


First published: 30 January 2023