The Education-Participation Nexus: Rethinking Conventional Wisdom.

The positive effect of education on political participation is unique in the annals of political science in that it is almost universally acknowledged to exist. Political scientists and pundits alike view this link as inextricable even in light of persistent counterintuitive trends, including the coincidental increase in levels of educational attainment and decrease in levels of political participation over the past fifty years, and failure to clarify the causal mechanisms that produce this strong relationship. In this work, I question the validity of observational findings touting education as "the universal solvent." To do so, I isolate the role of education from confounding influences by examining a randomized experiment concerning educational attainment. Downstream analysis of this educational intervention supports observational findings of a positive independent relationship between education and political participation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]