This is bound to spark controversy....
I've been giving some real thought to advocating against so much emphasis on higher education. On a national level, four-year degrees are now pretty worthless, and they're becoming more and more expensive. Most people go to college to avoid having to go into the production sector; but as we've seen, China is the predominant power house because they're benefiting from the supply-side economics situation. If we stopped placing such high value on higher education, and insisting that everyone goes, then we'd stop wasting that money, pushing people in debt, and raising the cost of higher education as fast as we are. In doing so, more people would trend towards production work, which should decrease prices for us overall.
I certainly don't bregrudge anyone trying to improve their lots in life. God knows I've worked hard to do it for myself, too. But everyone here likely knows someone who shouldn't have gone to college.
I don't know if anyone else here took political science at uni, but as someone who attempted to get into the Poli Sci graduate program (turned down because I had too busy of a schedule to try to pull it off in five years), but the academic programs are overwhelmingly liberal-leaning, from the journals and professors. My thesis director was relatively not liberal, but as one professor out of about 20 in the department, that doesn't speak very much to the bias. Now, you can certainly try to use this as evidence (similarly to the implication of your original post) that the "smarter" people are liberal-leaning. Another thought is that conservative-leaning people don't want to have to make the effort and always be looked-down-upon in a community that is overwhelmingly organized and leaning against them.
