Today’s college freshmen are more likely to participate in a student-led protest than each of the nearly five decades of classes that preceded them, according to survey results released on Thursday. That includes the college freshmen of the late 1960s and early 70s, an era storied for its on-campus political activism. Nearly one in 10 freshmen said there was a very good chance they would participate in a protest in college, according to the annual Freshman Survey by the Cooperative Institutional Research Program, part of the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. The racial unrest in recent years — including police shootings nationwide and protests on college campuses — has clearly made a mark on students’ psyches. Among black students, 16 percent said they were very likely to demonstrate while in college. But students of all races reported being more likely to demonstrate than just a year before.

February 11, 2016 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education