Dr. Matthew Woessner is an assistant professor of public policy at Penn State, and he’s the only conservative in his department.  I know, I know, you’ve heard this one before.  But what makes his story different is that, along with his wife, the other Dr. Woessner, he actually studies and writes about why conservatives don’t generally go into academe.  Part of the answer isn’t what conservatives like to hear.

[L]iberal students reported valuing intellectual freedom, creativity, and the chance to write original work and make a theoretical contribution to science. They outnumbered conservative students two to one in the humanities and social sciences - which are among the fields most likely to produce interest in doctoral study. Conservative students, however, put more value on personal achievement and orderliness, and on practical professions, like accounting and computer science, that could earn them lots of money.

But that’s not the only reason conservatives steer away from academe:

The Woessners also found that conservative students put a higher priority than liberal ones on raising a family. That does not always fit well with a career in academe, where people often delay childbearing until after they earn tenure.

The research led the Woessners to conclude that if higher education wants to attract more conservatives to the professoriate, it should smooth the way financially, offering subsidized health insurance and housing for graduate students, and adopting family-friendly policies for professors.

I’m a conservative in academe, and I can tell you that my decision to have (and to homeschool) children pretty much limits me, financially, to jobs in administration, which is not what I would prefer.  But that’s how it is, for now, at least.