The Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has bashed President Obama for spending too much time in the faculty lounge during his time at Harvard University. If Mr. Romney—who holds two graduate degrees from Harvard himself—is right, that time may have been well spent, as the president continues to reap the bulk of campaign-contribution dollars from the academic community.
College faculty, administrators, and others in higher education have donated more than $5.3-million to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential race so far. Roughly 81 percent of those donations have gone toward President Obama’s re-election.
The president has received approximately $4.3-million from higher-education employees since the beginning of 2011, according to Federal Election Commission data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics.
Mr. Romney, by contrast, received just over $1-million in donations from individuals working in higher education. Nearly half of that figure, $410,000, came in the form of donations to Restore Our Future, a “super” political action committee supporting Mr. Romney. That’s 12 times as much as academic employees donated to Priorities USA, a super PAC supporting Mr. Obama.
Higher-education employees donated $12.2-million to candidates for federal office and super PAC’s over all. Seventy-two percent of that money went to Democrats, and 28 percent went to Republicans.
The employees of the University of California system gave the most in political donations to the two parties, over $565,400, including contributions to individual campaigns as well as to political action committees.
Harvard University—a smaller pool with deeper pockets—came in second, with its employees donating more than $550,900 to political campaigns. Stanford University came in third, with employee contributions totaling $412,217.
Full Sail University, the for-profit institution run by a major donor to Mr. Romney, ranked sixth. Its employees donated $204,500 to political campaigns, the largest total from the staff of any for-profit institution.
Fully 91 percent of campaign contributions from University of California employees have gone toward Democratic campaigns, while 87 percent of campaign contributions from those affiliated with Harvard went toward Democrats. By comparison, 93 percent of donations from Full Sail employees went toward Republican candidates.
Jay W. Lorsch, a professor of human relations at Harvard Business School, and his wife made maximum donations of $2,500 each to Mr. Obama’s re-election.
“The Republican side probably thinks we’re all left-wing kooks, but ... the academics that I know here and elsewhere have a certain view of reality and what kind of a country they want,” Mr. Lorsch says. “The Democratic policies seem to most of us to be the better path to support.”
A 2007 Chronicle analysis of academic-employee contributors turned up similar results, with institutions from California and the Ivy League dominating the list of top individual contributors. And with roughly $1.7-million in individual donations, the University of California was the largest single employer of those contributing to President Obama’s campaign in 2008, according to Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics.
This political skew within the academic community should be of little surprise, according to Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University.
“Voting patterns among people in higher education are so colossally one-sided it’s almost ridiculous,” he says.
Changes From 2008
Still, the higher-education sector’s donations in 2012 differ from 2008 contributions in two distinct ways: For-profit universities are more of a presence, and “outside” campaign spending has risen.
In the Chronicle‘s 2007 analysis, no for-profit institution landed on the list of colleges whose employees donated the most to political campaigns. This election cycle, employees of two for-profit institutions rank among the top 20 academic donors.
Those two are Full Sail University and the Apollo Group, a for-profit higher-education company that owns the University of Phoenix. Those institutions are also among the three in the top-20 list that favored Republican candidates over all. (See related article, Page A16.) The third was Georgetown University, where an employee donated $100,000 to Restore Our Future.
Another key difference between campaign contributions in 2008 and 2012 comes via the rise of super PAC’s, organizations that can raise unlimited funds from corporations, unions, and individuals. In 2010, a Washington, D.C., circuit court ruled that as long as political action committees do not directly donate to a candidate’s campaign or party, donors are allowed to contribute unlimited sums to the organizations.
Nonprofit universities themselves are loath to donate money to political campaigns, which would threaten their tax-exempt status, according to Ms. Krumholz. For-profit institutions, however, have little to lose and much to gain by financing the campaigns of political allies, particularly members of Congress who sit on education-related committees and decide how the for-profit industry is regulated. The rise of super PAC’s offers increased opportunities to donate outside money, not given directly to candidates or party committees.
But not all outside money is coming from the for-profit sector. Two employees of nonprofit universities donated $100,000 each to Restore Our Future, the super PAC supporting Mr. Romney’s presidential bid: Griffith Harsh, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University, and Nicholas Rosenkranz, a law professor at Georgetown University.
So far in this election cycle, the education sector has donated roughly $500,000 in outside money to super PAC’s. Still, the education sector is hardly a power player in the realm of super-PAC donations, ranking 40th among industries contributing outside money, according to Ms. Krumholz. (The center’s data on education includes donations made by some employees of elementary and secondary schools, but their donations represent a small portion of the money.)
A Hot Issue
Though other industries may hold higher stakes in the outcome of the presidential election, President Obama and Mr. Romney have both made the rising cost of higher education part of their stump speeches. In his 2012 State of the Union address, the president said he was putting colleges “on notice” to keep tuition low, and he has touted the federal direct-student-loan program created during his term.
Mr. Romney has made examples of for-profit colleges as low-cost alternatives to traditional colleges, and has advised students to shop around for an affordable institution before saddling themselves with loan debt.
Both candidates have thrown their support behind a measure extending lower interest rates for subsidized Stafford loans, which are set to double July 1. While the idea of extending the lower rate has received bipartisan support in Congress, lawmakers are at an impasse as Senate Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to pay for the measure.
Stumping on education policy may draw attention from those in the professoriate, but the fundamental issue in this election for most academics, as for most other voters, is the economy. S.P. Kothari, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his wife made the maximum donation each to Mr. Romney’s campaign. Mr. Kothari says that he agrees with the Republican’s economic policies, and that the government should reward citizens who are financially successful.
“I would like to swing the pendulum a little toward right of center, whereas it has been to left of center,” he says.
