Can the relationship between higher education and cosmopolitanism be explained by field of study? Rahsaan Maxwell Department of Political Science University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill [email protected] October 12, 2020 Acknowledgements Cameron Ballard-Rosa and Marc Hetherington provided helpful comments on previous ver- sions. 1 Abstract One of the most divisive debates of our time is whether societies should be more or less cosmopolitan. One reason for the divisiveness is the overlap between cosmopoli- tanism and other societal cleavages. For example, post-secondary qualifications are strongly associated with greater cosmopolitanism. This relationship is remarkably ro- bust but it is unclear whether educational attainment directly affects cosmopolitanism or whether pro and anti-cosmopolitan people sort into different educational trajec- tories. In this paper, I explore whether contradictory findings can be explained by previous studies mis-specifying the aspect of education that affects cosmopolitanism. I use the Dutch LISS Panel to focus on field of study; an important source of vari- ation within post-secondary education. I find that respondents with humanities or social sciences degrees are more cosmopolitan than respondents with physical science or technical degrees. However, controlling for field of study cannot account for the cosmopolitanism gap across educational attainment. Moreover, there is no evidence that a post-secondary degree in humanities or social science subjects causes more cos- mopolitanism. It is more likely that cosmopolitan people sort into humanities and social science subjects. This has implications for our understanding of the relationship between cosmopolitanism and education as well as the formulation of worldviews more broadly. 2 1 Introduction One of the most divisive debates across Western Europe and North America is whether societies should be more or less cosmopolitan (Kriesi et al. 2012). The central principle of cosmopolitanism is that humans are part of one community (Appiah 2006). Cosmopolitans believe humans should not be limited by nation-state boundaries and societies should be open to immigration, multiculturalism, and robust international institutions (Beck and Grande 2007; Maxwell 2019). Opponents of cosmopolitanism believe societies should limit ethnic diversity, privilege national sovereignty, and maintain historical traditions. The debate be- tween these perspectives is so intense, it may restructure social cleavages across Europe and North America (de Wilde et al. 2019; Hooghe and Marks 2018). One reason for the divisiveness of cosmopolitanism is its overlap with other societal cleav- ages. Most notably, studies show that higher educational qualifications are associated with more support for cosmopolitanism (Hainmueller and Hiscox 2007; Hakhverdian et al. 2013; Igarashi and Saito 2014). This is a remarkably robust relationship, and is consistent over time and across country contexts. However, there is an ongoing debate about how to inter- pret the relationship between educational attainment and cosmopolitanism. Some scholars find evidence that educational attainment has a direct causal effect on cosmopolitanism (Cavaillé and Marshall 2019; d’Hombres and Nunziata 2016; Margaryan, Paul and Siedler 2019). Other studies suggest the divide is due to pro and anti-cosmopolitan people sorting into different educational trajectories (Finseraas, Skorge and Strøm 2018; Kunst, Kuhn and van de Werfhorst 2020; Lancee and Sarrasin 2015). In this paper, I explore whether these contradictory findings can be explained by previ- ous studies mis-specifying the aspect of education that affects cosmopolitanism. The logic of the causal relationship is that higher education provides information, cognitive skills and exposure to a broad range of people, all of which sensitize students to the value of cosmopoli- tan diversity (Nie, Junn and Stehlik-Barry 1996; Stubager 2008; Surridge 2016). However, scholars may have overlooked important variation within post-secondary education in how 3 information, skills and socialization operate. The key variation within post-secondary education that I examine is field of study. Post- secondary education includes a wide range of subjects, from art history to mechanical engi- neering. Within that range, humanities and the social sciences are the most likely to promote contextual understanding of social issues, which may be directly compatible with an openness to diversity and cosmopolitanism. In comparison, physical sciences and technical subjects are less likely to engage social issues and are more likely to rely on formal codified rules (Guimond, Begin and Palmer 1989; Ladd and Lipset 1975; Persson 2012). This does not im- ply that physical sciences and technical subjects are associated with anti-cosmopolitanism. Instead, the key insight is that humanities and the social sciences are more strongly related to cosmopolitanism. Therefore, the relationship between post-secondary education and cos- mopolitanism might only be present (or might be stronger) for people who study humanities or social sciences. I use the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences (LISS) panel. The longitudinal data structure is particularly useful for my inquiry because it allows me to observe cosmopolitanism before and after respondents receive post-secondary degrees in dif- ferent fields of study. This provides leverage on whether education affects cosmopolitanism in ways that would not be possible with cross-sectional data. The LISS panel is also useful because it provides information on respondents’ field of study; a level of detail not often found in large panel studies. The LISS panel also allows me to analyze multiple indicators of cosmopolitanism: immigration attitudes, support for the European Union (EU), political party support and social contacts with non-Dutch people. I find that field of study is associated with cosmopolitanism. Respondents with hu- manities or social sciences degrees are generally more cosmopolitan than respondents with physical science or technical degrees. In addition, the cosmopolitanism gap across fields of study is roughly similar to the cosmopolitanism gap between respondents with and without post-secondary education. However, controlling for field of study cannot account for the 4 cosmopolitanism gap across educational attainment. Moreover, there is no evidence that getting a post-secondary degree in humanities or social science subjects causes more cos- mopolitanism. It is more likely that cosmopolitan people sort into humanities and social science subjects. The results in this paper have several implications. First, by examining field of study, I offer a new perspective for the established literature on education and cosmopolitanism. The main focus of previous research has been educational attainment, but I show that respondents who do not have post-secondary degrees but study the humanities or social sciences are just as cosmopolitan as respondents with post-secondary degrees in physical sciences or technical subjects. If we want to understand how educational stratification relates to cosmopolitanism, a new line of inquiry on field of study may be just as important as standard analyses of educational attainment. This paper also engages debates about whether educational attainment has a causal effect on cosmopolitanism. Respondents with post-secondary degrees in humanities and social sciences subjects are the most cosmopolitan subset, but there is no evidence that their education caused an increase in cosmopolitanism. Instead, my results suggest they were more cosmopolitan prior to their education, which is consistent with the logic of sorting. Sorting suggests that cosmopolitanism may be a sticky disposition that is formed early in life (Hetherington and Weiler 2018; Sears and Valentino 1997). This connects to research which finds educational divides in political tolerance (Dra˘zanová 2017; Sniderman et al. 1996) and authoritarianism (Stubager 2008) already exist before education occurs. In addition, the evidence for sorting challenges conventional wisdom that cosmopolitanism is most prevalent among the young and fades as people age (Favell 2008; Recchi 2015). My findings engage debates about when and how worldviews are incubated (Gross 2013; Gross and Simmons 2014; Lerch, Russell and Ramirez 2017), and suggest that early-life socialization is a key stage for future analysis. Finally, this paper deepens our understanding of how cosmopolitanism overlaps with 5 other societal divides. If educational attainment and field of study are equally important for understanding the connection between education and cosmopolitanism, cross-cutting cleavages may open possibilities for compromise. Future studies should explore this in more detail as cosmopolitanism will likely remain a salient social and political issue across Europe and North America for the foreseeable future. 2 Fields of study and cosmopolitanism The analysis in this paper departs from the insight that fields of study involve different subject matters, forms of analysis, and cognitive skills, all of which may be related to social and political attitudes and behavior (Ladd and Lipset 1975; Lopez, Gurin and Nagda 1998). For the purposes of this paper, I distinguish between humanities and social science degrees on one side and physical science and technical degrees on the other.1 Research suggests that people who study physical sciences or technical subjects are more likely than humanities or social