Just who are these moppets?

You’ll find some fascinating data in yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed. In “Profiling the American Freshman,” we learn that, each year, UCLA researchers survey 270,000 (Wow!) entering undergraduates at 400 colleges. Results of the latest survey are in:

This year’s data show that the first-year students are increasingly politically minded and moving away from the center of the political spectrum. They are far apart on many social issues…. They are concerned about financing their educations and are fully confident in their academic abilities.

One in three students reported discussing politics frequently during their last year of high school…. That’s up from 26 percent in 2004, the last time that question was asked, and represents the highest total in the 40 years of the survey.

Evidently, that figure is high even for an election year. What’s it all mean?

… The proportion of students who identified themselves as being liberal (28 percent) and conservative (24 percent) were the highest in decades….

—Evidence of increased polarization? Yeah, probably. On the other hand, maybe these kids don’t know what the words “liberal” and “conservative” mean! So they pick the shorter of the two. Just a theory.

…Two of three students surveyed said they have “some” or “major” concerns about paying for college….

That third one must be brain-dead. Or just a Bush “conservative.”

…Making more money and getting a better job were two of the top reasons that students cited for choosing to go to college.

And Lake Wobegon lives: Seventy-two percent of men and 66 percent of women surveyed said they are either “above average” or in the “highest 10 percent” of academic ability.

I bet that's true about bloggers, too.