Liberals in Academe

One of the continuing issues for higher education is whether colleges and universities are overly biased toward a liberal perspective. If the faculty is biased toward one point of view many observers would suggest that teaching is replaced by indoctrination.

Two professors (Gordon Hewitt of Hamilton College and Mack Mariani of Xavier University) did a study of changes in a cohort of students in private universities, granting that the faculty is indeed imbalanced to the left. The professors looked at students in these colleges using the UCLA student attitudes survey. They conclude from the review that, even if you grant the notion that college faculties are decidedly more liberal than the population, the changes are small, at least for the group that was studied.

But the professor's data tell another story. During the four years these private college students were undergraduates - the percentage of conservatives declined from 27.3% to 24.5%. At the same time those calling themselves liberals increased from 24.9% to 32.7%. That is a net change in four years of almost 11%. An 11% change in any election would make a big difference.

Ultimately, one wonders whether the indoctrination that seems to happen, based on the professor's data, is sustained. One of the most attributed quotations (variously attributed to Wendell Wilkie, George Bernard Shaw, Woodrow Wilson, Winston Churchill and a few others) suggests that "a man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart, and a man who at 40 is not a conservative has no brain." Perhaps, the indoctrinated students will follow the maxim.