"Forty-three percent of incoming freshmen at U.S. colleges and universities last fall identified themselves as having middle-of-the-road political views, with 29 percent calling themselves liberal and 23 percent self-described as conservative, according to a new annual study of college freshmen.

The study showed an increase in the number of students who identified themselves as liberal, which a year earlier had been 28 percent, and a slight decrease for conservatives, who in 2006 were at 24 percent, described as an all-time high in the survey. There was no change in the number who identified themselves as middle of the road.

The report, conducted by the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles, is the 42nd annual study of the characteristics of students attending U.S. colleges and universities as first-time, full-time freshmen.

Among other findings:

• Of the nearly 76 percent of freshmen who said they used the Internet frequently for research or homework during the previous year, the majority said they did not evaluate the quality or reliability of information they received on it.
• Twenty-nine percent of incoming freshmen at U.S. schools explored topics on their own if it was not required for a class in their senior year.
• The percentage of students who picked their college because it "has a very good academic reputation" increased almost six percentage points from 2006, to 63 percent. That was the highest in 35 years. So, too, was the statistic on the importance of being awarded financial aid, which jumped five percentage points from 2006, to 39 percent.
• Seventy-six percent of incoming college students reported that parental involvement in their choice of college was the right amount, and 24 percent said it was too little. Hispanic students were most likely to report too little parent involvement, the report said, adding that it might be because this population historically has the largest proportion of first-generation college students.
• Fifty-four percent of students said they frequently asked questions in class during the previous year.

The survey received responses from 272,036 students at 356 schools across the country. Those responses were statistically adjusted to reflect the 1.4 million first-time, full-time students who entered colleges and universities as freshmen last fall, according to the report. The survey has a reported margin of sampling error of less than one percentage point." (Valerie Strauss, The Washington Post, January 27, 2008)