The following is excerpted from the Deseret News. To read the full report, CLICK HERE. 

The most politically balanced student body among three of the top schools in Utah was at Brigham Young University, according to a new survey from the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology. Of the three Utah universities included in the survey, Utah State University had the most conservative student body, while the University of Utah’s students tilted more to the left.

The study, released earlier this month, ranked 159 of the top U.S. schools according to the political and ideological diversity of their students. The findings were based on 2020 and 2021 surveys of 57,000 undergraduate students in the U.S. conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which advocates for free speech on college campuses.

Unsurprisingly, colleges students in the U.S. tend to be more liberal than Americans as a whole, with significantly fewer conservative students at liberal arts and Ivy League schools. “Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 55-23% margin on campus, and liberals outnumber conservatives 53-21%,” the study says. “Elite students are thus two-thirds more Democratic and twice as liberal as the American population.”

Only 10-15% of students at Ivy League schools identify as conservative, while 60-75% identify as liberal.

The most politically diverse school in the nation, according to the study, is the University of Arkansas, while Smith College in Massachusetts came in last. At Smith, only 1% of students identified as conservative, according to the study. Student bodies at public universities – especially large, flagship schools – were more likely to be politically balanced, although most are still more liberal than the general population.

BYU ranked as the 26th most politically balanced university in the survey, while USU came in 44th and the U. ranked 45th.

To read the full report, CLICK HERE.Â