Academics Max On Obama

As expected, professors are maxing out in making political contributions to the incumbent Democratic president but a more interesting picture of higher education emerges when you look at for profit colleges. “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,” Emma Roller and Andrea Fuller reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education on June 22, 2012. “Roughly 81 percent of those donations have gone toward President Obama’s re-election.”

Nonetheless, a look at the relatively tiny proportion of academia made up of for-profit colleges reveals a trend in the opposite direction. “After four years of bruising investigations, negative headlines, and tightened regulation, for-profit colleges appear ready for change in Washington—and not of President Obama’s brand,” Kelly Field reported in that same issue of The Chronicle. “Over the past year and a half, political-action committees representing for-profit colleges have given roughly $300,000 to Republican candidates for Congress and the White House, almost twice the amount they’ve donated to Democrats, according to data provided by the Center for Responsive Politics.”

“Employees of the 15 publicly traded companies in the sector have donated roughly $350,000 to campaigns, with almost three-quarters of that money going to Republican candidates.”

Nevertheless, the “Top Beneficiaries of For-Profit Colleges’ Political Action Committee Donations,” as listed by the Chronicle, are:

U. S. Rep. John Kline (R-Minn.)–$51,000

U. S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N. C.)–$24,584

U. S. Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.)–$20,250

U. S. Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.)—$19,000

Interestingly, while Rep. Kline receives more than double what Democratic Reps. Hastings and Andrews do, Republican Rep. Foxx does not. Moreover, Reps. Kline and Foxx, both of whom we have covered, may be TEA Party faves but the others clearly aren’t. Both Reps. Hastings and Andrews, for example, are supportive of the so-called Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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