Cuesta Compared to SLO County and Cal Poly

The make-up of faculty at Cal Poly registered to vote was compared to San Luis Obispo County and the City of San Luis Obispo. With the addition of data from Cuesta College, it only seems appropriate to put together some additional comparisons. 

% in each category, among those registered at Cuesta v. Cal Poly

First, compared to Cal Poly, Cuesta has a greater proportion of Republican faculty by 8.25 percentage points, and a smaller proportion of Democrat faculty by 6.26 percentage points. For the other categories the differences are relatively negligible. In general, for viewpoint diversity, these discrepancies are good. The divide between the proportion of registered faculty who are Democrats at Cal Poly compared to Republican is huge. Cuesta still has an overrepresentation of registered faculty identifying as Democrats, but not to the same extent as Cal Poly.

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% in each category, among those registered at Cuesta v. SLO County

Next, compared to San Luis Obispo County, Cuesta College does a slightly better job reflecting the county than Cal Poly did. But, it still has an overrepresentation of Democrats by 12.67 percentage points, and an underrepresentation of Republicans by 15.3 percentage points. For the other categories the differences are relatively negligible. Community Colleges, at least stereotypically, are expected to be more community oriented, and to better reflect and serve the local community they reside within than large state or private universities may. When it comes to faculty political party registration, Cuesta is on track and doing better than Cal Poly, but it is still out of touch and there is room for much improvement. 

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