The university bundle: Unpacking the sources of undergraduate moral socialization

Abstract

ABSTRACT Recent evidence suggests that higher education promotes moral attitudes typical of the progressive left. What aspects of the university experience contribute to this moral change? We conduct an exploratory analysis unpacking how curricular content and peer networks—two aspects of the ‘bundle’ of social influences that occur in university settings—might affect moral attitudes. Using two waves of data from students at a Canadian university (n = 232), we find some evidence that exposure to content related to social justice and involvement in left-leaning university peer circles can promote more individualistic forms of morality over ‘binding’ moral concerns for traditional social order, and heighten a more absolutist endorsement of social justice. Taken together, the university experience appears to be morally formative, but not uniformly so: moral change is shaped by a combination of factors implicating both formal and informal aspects of university life which students experience at varying rates.