Markus Kemmelmeier, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Nevada at Reno, set out to ask how political orientation affects a student's college performance. In a study entitled "What's in a Grade? Academic Success and Political Orientation", Kemmelmeier publishes some interesting results.

Previous studies have suggested that conservative students perform slightly worse than other students in certain liberal arts and "social science" courses, such as anthropology. Kemmelmeier's study doesn't overturn this, but it does shed some light on the cause. Rather than take up the commonplace argument that the liberal professors are punishing their conservative students, Kemmelmeier looks to another root cause: the students themselves.

While it has been long fashionable to describe (or dismiss) academia as being wholly dominated by liberals, little actual attention has been played to the supposedly oppressive relationship that exists between the liberal professor and her conservative students. Kemmelmeier's study suggests that, at least with respects to grades, no such oppression exists.

Looking at the records of almost four thousand students who had been asked to also identify their political leanings, Kemmelmeier found that among the liberal arts classes examined, no discernable difference in grades could be ascertained, even in courses in American culture, African-American studies, cultural anthropology, education, nursing, sociology, and women's studies.

There's a twist, however. Kemmelmeier did find evidence of performative difference between conservatives and liberals in one general area, however: business & economics. As it turns out, in courses dealing with economics and business, conservative students scored higher than their liberal peers. In all, the study suggests that in the liberal arts arena, professors are "more accepting of a broad range of student perspectives," whereas in economics courses, the "environments appear to be more sensitive to whether student perspectives are compatible with those of the academic discipline." In a sense, this is a reversal of the dominant caricature of academia, although Kemmelmeier does not see some insidious bias lurking here, either. Rather, he argues that conservative students may simply take such courses more seriously, and they may be more structured towards a conservative ethos ("competition" versus "cooperation," etc.).

None of this addresses the political orientation of professors, nor the general political tone at most universities. It does strongly suggest that those looking to blame their performance on their instructors or professors are misguided, however. Liberal or conservative, the study suggests that its how well you meet the course requirements that matters most, and meeting those requirements does not appear to be a function of one's political orientation.