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I found Dr. Long's observation that academically better undergraduates tend to be further to the left interesting. I may be way off, but from my own college and graduate school experience, I have a theory: Smart students who do very well in school tend to think that they are also very worldly and have a great grasp of "how life works", so to speak. This seems especially true if they have participated in educational programs that involve travel to developing countries (maybe the academically better students are more likely to do this). If they pick up ideas from their college professors, who tend to be fairly liberal, then the excellent grasp they think they have of the world tends to be slanted to the left. I have encountered such people, and had my libertarian, free-market views treated as though they are interesting (if they get that much respect), but very naive, and not rooted in a very sophisticated grasp of how the world works. This seems to come my way from very intelligent, high achieving people who have somehow picked up that particular way of looking at things.
In my experience, academically better undergraduates do tend, for whatever reason, to be further left *already* than the average undergraduate. And academically better undergraduates are presumably also more likely to go on to graduate school -- which is probably what explains why the average graduate student is further left than the average undergrad. So I doubt that leftist indoctrination has much to do with it.
Perhaps. On the other hand, Kerry was weakest among those who went to college but no further. Perhaps they were turned off by the perception that they were subject to "leftist indoctrination." This made them less likely to continue their education and more likely to vote Republican.
Of course, these statistical differences regarding education are often within the margin of error.
Highly educated: indoctrinated by leftist academia.
Poorly educated: stand to gain from expanded social welfare programs.