College makes you more liberal. D'oh!: recent UCLA study of Catholic colleges showed higher education tended to liberalize students' views, which worried some people. mind you. What's worrying, reallly, is that no one drew the inescapable corollary: less education makes you more conservative. Or, not to put too fine a point on it, rightingers are narrow-minded ignoramuses:

Whatever its flaws, the report provides the first tantalizing data on an issue that has been of serious concern to Catholics: whether, and to what extent, Catholic colleges help bolster students' religious faith and practice. "We would expect Catholic colleges to have a much stronger effect in bringing students closer to Catholic teachings, or at least not having them fall away," said Patrick J. Reilly, the report's author and president of the Cardinal Newman Society, a group dedicated to reinforcing the religious identity of Catholic colleges.

Others point out that students of all faiths, at all types of institutions, tend to become more liberal during their college years — so the changes may be due more to overall societal influences than to anything the college does or does not do.

"Students look at movies, at their friends, at their families, at everything around them, and that doesn't mean Catholic colleges are failing," said Monika Hellwig, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities. "The question is whether the task of higher education in our pluralistic, changing society is to lock students into rules — even rules I agree with — or to teach them critical thinking." Story