Debunking campus as left-wing monolith
journalgazette.net | Mar 6th 2011 3:00 AM
Do red-blooded, hard-working Americans pay thousands of dollars each year to
send their children to college, only to have those kids turned into pot-smoking
Obamacare-lovers by a pack of Communist hippies? This stereotype – professors
as brainwashing left-wing ideologues – has dogged academia at least since the
Vietnam War era. But let’s upend five popular misconceptions about the people
educating the next generation.
1. Today’s professors are more moderate than radical professors from the 1960s.
A recent, widely reported study on the political views of U.S. college
professors provides evidence that younger professors are more likely than their
older colleagues to define themselves as moderates. However, more relevant is
where they fall on specific political and social questions.
For our new book, “The Still Divided Academy,” we surveyed more than 4,000
professors, students and administrators from four-year colleges throughout the
United States. We compared the views of professors born after 1955, those born
between 1946 and 1955, and those born before 1945. The youngest group was most
liberal on key social issues, 7 percentage points more likely than the middle
group and 14 percentage points more likely than the oldest group to agree with
the statement “homosexuality is as acceptable a lifestyle as heterosexuality.”
And the youngest group was 8 percentage points more likely than the oldest
group to agree that “it is all right for a couple to live together without
intending to get married.” If this trend continues as older professors retire,
college faculties won’t become more moderate, but will drift toward the left.
2. College professors turn their students into liberals.
Prominent conservative commentators argue that by requiring students to read
politically charged books, slanting their lectures and belittling right-wing
arguments, liberal professors alter the views of impressionable undergraduates.
While some professors do attempt to influence their students’ politics, it’s
not clear that they make much of an impression. When we compared the political
views of first-year college students with those of seniors, we found little
evidence of systematic indoctrination. When 32 percent of first-year students
and 31 percent of seniors identify themselves as Democrats, it’s safe to say
that colleges aren’t turning elephants into donkeys.
There were also few differ- ences in attitudes about particular social and
economic issues. For example, 74 percent of first-year students believe that
“it is a woman’s right to decide whether or not to have an abortion.” Among
seniors, 73 percent agree. Students are not sponges who absorb whatever
political message is put in front of them. Rather, by age 18, people have their
own political values and biases, which are fairly resistant to change.
3. Tenure permits professors to espouse fringe views without consequence.
When we asked professors whether they “avoid expressing a particular point of
view because they expected a negative reaction,” 31 percent reported that they
“sometimes” or “frequently self-censor” to avoid a negative reaction from other
faculty members. Thirty-four percent reported that they do so to avoid negative
reactions from students. Though Democrats self-censor slightly more, this
tendency does not vary greatly by party affiliation, nor by tenure status.
4. Conservative academics are ostracized on campus.
We have found little evidence that right-leaning college professors are treated
poorly. In our survey, 33 percent of Republican and/or conservative faculty say
they are “very satisfied” with their careers, while 24 percent of Democratic
and/or liberal faculty say so. More than 90 percent of Republican professors
report that, given the chance to “begin your career over again,” they would
still become a professor. Meanwhile, fewer than 2 percent say they have been
treated unfairly because of their political views. These results are nearly
identical to those of their liberal counterparts.
However, conservative professors can have trouble publishing in peer-reviewed
journals and academic presses. A recent study of Harvard University Press by
Econ Journal Watch concluded that the publishing house is heavily biased toward
liberal views. Only eight of 494 books published in the past 10 years were
classified in the study as “conservative” or “classical liberal” in
orientation. Since the ability to publish is a key requirement of securing
tenure and promotions, this cannot be ignored.
5. College professors are liberal because better-educated people tilt left.
This is sometimes used to justify the relative lack of conservatives among U.S.
university professors. But it disregards the forces that encourage people to
pursue academic careers. We examined the relationship between political
orientation and educational ambition.
Liberal and conservative students report similar levels of satisfaction with
college and nearly identical grade-point averages, but conservatives are far
less likely to express interest in pursuing a doctorate. Why?
Part of the reason stems from their preferred majors. Conservative students are
roughly twice as likely to major in professional fields such as accounting or
hotel management that focus on immediate employment rather than advanced study.
But even in the same course of study, differences emerge between conservatives
and liberals. Among humanities majors, 19 percent of students on the political
right expressed an interest in pursuing a doctorate, compared with 30 percent
on the left. While smart liberals are drawn to academia, smart conservatives
choose other paths.
Original Page:
http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20110306/EDIT05/303069974/1147/EDIT07%3E
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