SURVEY: Economics, accounting, finance majors mostly OPPOSE socialism

A new College Pulse survey found that 8 in 10 philosophy majors support socialism while economics majors strongly oppose it.

The survey of 10,590 undergraduate students explored how one’s college major correlates with the approval of socialism as an economic system. Philosophy majors have an overwhelmingly favorable view of socialism -- almost eight in ten (78 percent) say that they favor socialism. Meanwhile, 64 percent of anthropology students and 58 percent of English and international relations students favored socialism.

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“Capitalism is a failure of a system,” an Appalachian State University student told the College Pulse. “If you weren’t born rich, you [aren’t] gonna be rich, so we should be focusing on helping our neighbors.” 

The student also stated that those who supported capitalism were defending “a system designed to keep them poor and exhausted.”

The poll found that nearly four in ten (39 percent) of total undergraduate students held favorable views toward socialism. 

In total, however, only 12 percent of students would be very enthusiastic about voting for a candidate who is a self-described socialist. But 30 percent said that they would be comfortable supporting a candidate who is a socialist.

While students in humanities fields mostly favored socialism, students in the areas of accounting, finance, economics, and law/criminology were, for the most part, strongly opposed to it, the survey found. 

Only 20 percent of accounting majors stated they had either a “very favorable” or “somewhat favorable” of socialism, while 22 percent, 26 percent, and 28 percent of students majoring in finance, economics, and law/criminology, respectively, said the same. 

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“People tend to gravitate towards socialism because, on the surface, it seems to promote equality and fairness to a greater degree than capitalism… this view of socialism is somewhat misguided,” an economics student from Harvard University, who requested to remain anonymous, told Campus Reform. “[It is] attempting to ignore or repress human nature.”

“Capitalism has led to the greatest increase in global living standards in the course of human history,” an anonymous economics major from Boston College also told Campus Reform. “Free trade and free markets have allowed countries… to bring immense wealth to their people. Socialism in the USSR and currently in Venezuela has sent these countries back decades.”

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @ethanycai