Nearly 9 in 10 college students have pretended to be more progressive than they really are, according to a new survey.
Northwestern University researchers Forest Romm and Kevin Waldman, between 2023 and 2025, conducted 1,452 confidential interviews with undergraduates at Northwestern University and the University of Michigan.
In a study focused on development, not politics, the researchers wanted to know: “What happens to identity formation when belief is replaced by adherence to orthodoxy?”
Thus, they asked participants: Have you ever pretended to hold more progressive views than you truly endorse to succeed socially or academically?
The results showed that 88% said yes, they had pretended to be more progressive, Romm and Waldman wrote in an opinion column for The Hill last week.
The survey also found that more than 80% said they had submitted classwork that misrepresented their views in order to align with professors.
“If the number’s actually right, this is the most damning thing I’ve ever read about higher ed,” Temple professor Jacob Shell posted on X.
According to the researchers, the students were “not cynical, but adaptive.”
“In a campus environment where grades, leadership, and peer belonging often hinge on fluency in performative morality, young adults quickly learn to rehearse what is safe,” Romm and Waldman wrote in The Hill.
“The result is not conviction but compliance. And beneath that compliance, something vital is lost.”
The survey also found:
- 78% said they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding gender identity.
- 72% said they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding on politics.
- 68% said they self-censor on their beliefs surrounding on family values.
The researchers said they used the issue of gender identity to “test the gap between expression and belief.”
“In public, students echoed expected progressive narratives. In private, however, their views were more complex,” Romm and Waldman wrote, adding that 87% said they identified as exclusively heterosexual and supported a binary model of gender, 9% said they had partial openness to gender fluidity, and 7% said they embraced the idea of gender as a broad spectrum.
Not only that, 77% said they disagreed with the idea that gender identity should override biological sex in such domains as sports, health care, or public data.
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