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The dramatic shift among college professors that’s hurting students’ education

Beaudreaux

Beaudreaux

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The dramatic shift among college professors that’s hurting students’ education

If you've spent time in a college or university any time in the past quarter-century you probably aren't surprised to hear that professors have become strikingly more liberal. In 1990, according to survey data by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) at UCLA, 42 percent of professors identified as "liberal" or "far-left." By 2014, that number had jumped to 60 percent.

Over the same period, the number of academics identifying as "moderate" fell by 13 percentage points, and the share of "conservative" and "far-right" professors dropped nearly six points. In the academy, liberals now outnumber conservatives by roughly 5 to 1. Among the general public, on the other hand, conservatives are considerably more prevalent than liberals and have been for some time.

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Imagine that? I've debated a number of folks on here a number of times that deny this is true.
 
THe problem is that professors so often want to indoctrinate their charges with their political beliefs. Education is teaching people how to think, not what to think, so the fix is to get the university back to the task of providing education.

They have zero interest in doing that.
 
iguanaman said:
How can we "fix" this? Lowering standards for professors seems unwise.
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I don't think it can be "fixed" as much as it may just be part of a cycle in that as more and more liberals are promoted into senior positions within academia they tend to hire, promote, and support the advancement of like minded people and like minded thinking.

The problem I see here is the lack of a counter view in academia at the time of a young person's life where we want them getting as much information as possible from differing view points to allow them to make informed decisions about their future and the future of our country. The term "indoctrination" is over used, but in this instance it is apt to say that our young people are in fact being indoctrinated.

Differing views breeds debate which gives birth to learning. Being exposed to only one viewpoint is indoctrination, not education.
 
Beaudreaux said:
The dramatic shift among college professors that’s hurting students’ education

Imagine that? I've debated a number of folks on here a number of times that deny this is true.
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I am less than impressed with the argument made for why this is hurtful to students' education. Here is the extent of the argument.

So fears that universities will indoctrinate your children and turn them into a bunch of bearded Marxist automatons are probably unfounded. That said, American politics seems to work best when the two main factions are animated by rigorous thinking and serious ideas. And if there's no home for conservative ideas at today's colleges, it stands to reason that our political discourse will be poorer for it.
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The notion that a professor will influence and shift the political leaning of their students seems largely unfounded. For starters, the political leaning of a professor is unlikely to be a point of discussion (or even color the discussion significantly) in the majority of the college classes, think physics, statistics, literature, etc. And then you have the issue of whether the professors are the source of the political shift that often occurs within students as they attend more university.
 
Beaudreaux said:
I don't think it can be "fixed" as much as it may just be part of a cycle in that as more and more liberals are promoted into senior positions within academia they tend to hire, promote, and support the advancement of like minded people and like minded thinking.

The problem I see here is the lack of a counter view in academia at the time of a young person's life where we want them getting as much information as possible from differing view points to allow them to make informed decisions about their future and the future of our country. The term "indoctrination" is over used, but in this instance it is apt to say that our young people are in fact being indoctrinated.

Differing views breeds debate which gives birth to learning. Being exposed to only one viewpoint is indoctrination, not education.
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Yet the article mentions that the actual makeup of graduating students shows little change and they remain more conservative than their teachers. That does not show "indoctrination". I think that is more of a conservative tendency which may explain why there are less of them teaching in colleges. All of my right wing professors were very defensive of their positions and less likely to tolerate dissent.
 
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MrT said:
I am less than impressed with the argument made for why this is hurtful to students' education. Here is the extent of the argument.



The notion that a professor will influence and shift the political leaning of their students seems largely unfounded. For starters, the political leaning of a professor is unlikely to be a point of discussion (or even color the discussion significantly) in the majority of the college classes, think physics, statistics, literature, etc. And then you have the issue of whether the professors are the source of the political shift that often occurs within students as they attend more university.
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If the students respect the professor then his/her attempts to manipulate their opinions will be to some degree effective. Even if the leader in the classroom is not actively trying to manipulate/mold/train the students using his/her world view as a guide there will likely be a profound political bias in that classroom as the students do what students tend to do , suck up to the professor. The more respect they have for the professor the worse the problem will be. This is human nature.

Your argument is thus rejected.
 
MrT said:
I am less than impressed with the argument made for why this is hurtful to students' education. Here is the extent of the argument.



The notion that a professor will influence and shift the political leaning of their students seems largely unfounded. For starters, the political leaning of a professor is unlikely to be a point of discussion (or even color the discussion significantly) in the majority of the college classes, think physics, statistics, literature, etc. And then you have the issue of whether the professors are the source of the political shift that often occurs within students as they attend more university.
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The fact that the actual numbers of a particular view point have increased is not evidence that there is an influence by that particular view point over the students? Seriously? Where do think the new professors that increase the numbers of liberal professors come from? They aren't made in a factory.
 
iguanaman said:
Yet the article mentions that the actual makeup of graduating students shows little change and they remain more conservative than their teachers. That does not show "indoctrination". I think that is more of a conservative tendency which may explain why there are less of them teaching in colleges. All of my right wing professors were very defensive of their positions and less likely to tolerate dissent.
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First, this is a WaPo article, and has a liberal bias in it's tone as you can see where after the first chart writes a sentence that is just plain opinion not based on any facts what-so-ever - "In itself this isn't necessarily a huge problem." and then again when they consider a ~10% increase in liberal lean from Freshmen to Seniors as "not much..." and based that on only one year's (2009) worth of data. Plus, a lot of the data is based on student self identification regarding political lean.

Given a student is surrounded by predominately one view, wouldn't they tend to see that view point as moderate, versus what it actually is?
 
iguanaman said:
How can we "fix" this? Lowering standards for professors seems unwise.
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Lowering standards is what got us here. Clearly liberalism is a religion, as is any other world view that one holds based on faith and ardor and having more religiousness in college would be a decline in standards.
One can not be a conservative, liberal, progressive, socialist, etc. and a free thinker who values debate and a search for truth.
 
the idea that educated people are liberal should give conservatives pause.
 
Hawkeye10 said:
THe problem is that professors so often want to indoctrinate their charges with their political beliefs. Education is teaching people how to think, not what to think, so the fix is to get the university back to the task of providing education.

They have zero interest in doing that.
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That's a ridiculously unfair overgeneralization.

I agree with you that the goal is to nurture critical thinking and creative problem-solving. It's true that we're all hearing a lot lately about various campus excesses, but what we don't really here about are the many, many universities that do not have the problems we read about.

A primary task is imparting/sharing knowledge--professors profess, after all--but for some universities, an equally important task is research and the acquisition of funding. If your university styles itself as an "upper division research institute," in some fields the pressure to secure grants and other funding is immense, and those who focus too much on teaching are punished for it.

If you want universities to teach more, begin with finding a solution to the obsession with "assessment and measurement," which sucks away valuable time in the classroom and out of it. There is always a new database to feed and "quality enhancement" to maintain.
 
I was a student too--nine years with only one summer off. But in all that time, and even as a provisional member of the Academy and with one degree behind me, I still understood only in part. I'm talking now from the other side of the lectern. ;)
 
With a liberal arts education, this is an issue, but there's two things to keep in mind.

1) This is dependent upon fields of study. The "hard sciences" will not have the same political or ideological outlook or the same sense of urgency with discussing left-wing or right-wing thought. Your STEM fields will be quite safe.

2) This is substantially influenced by generational switches. While Buckley acutely showed the growing tensions with the post-war conservative movement and Ivy League schools, this wasn't becoming a substantial problem until the graduate school class of the early and mid-1960s started to themselves become professors. Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, we have to remember that fellow-travelers were being pressured into loyalty oaths and pressure for removal. With the 1960s, that calculus changed. Given that professors stayed in their positions for decades once reaching tenure, their actual presence lasts longer than a normal generation. Those professors are aging and on their way out. They later influenced the remaining left-wing professors, many of whom are middle aged and younger, but this can change over time. The academy is very left-wing, often linguistically much further to the Left than Marx, but economically and policy wise, social democratic.

However, that's not what's really hurting a student's education if we are talking about the characteristics of their professors. The destruction of a meaningful professorship with a lack of tenure-track positions, a lack of decent wages (so much so that being a public school teacher often pays more, gives you less work, and provides job security), and an overabundance of candidates has really started to take its toll on higher education. The more graduate students 'wake up,' the more likely it is that the gifted among them (including those actually interested in teaching) will move elsewhere and shift the balance toward mediocrity. Pedagogically nothing changes, because they don't do much to train professors in the methodology of teaching to begin with, but you're going to be left with weaker professors doing the teaching--and presumably, research.

All the meanwhile, tuition continues to skyrocket, universities still struggling to move beyond their intellectual bubbles with utilitarian and real-world application of theory. What will students gain from this? Nothing, but if we accept the notion that a gifted professor can make the difference between casual reading and learning on the internet and true mentorship, they will be harmed.
 
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Re your #1, in the past month there's been a thread with a vid clip of a biology prof waxing politically rhapsodic, and I still want to know how that guy found an opportunity during a biology lecture to take a chair and expound the way he did.

Re your #2, I'm curious whether you think that professors should be required to take teaching methodology classes. Surely, this would be as part of their grad studies rather than later, yes?
 
What's wrong with professors being liberal? Would hide-bound, closed-minded, authoritarian conservatives be a better choice for a teacher?
 
Not all conservatives are "hide-bound, closed-minded, authoritarians," but the more important issue is using one's classroom, irrespective of political lean, is using one's lectern as a bully-pulpit.
 
nota bene said:
Re your #1, in the past month there's been a thread with a vid clip of a biology prof waxing politically rhapsodic, and I still want to know how that guy found an opportunity during a biology lecture to take a chair and expound the way he did.

Re your #2, I'm curious whether you think that professors should be required to take teaching methodology classes. Surely, this would be as part of their grad studies rather than later, yes?
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In regard to #2:

Yes, they should. However, a number of schools more or less require them to take one course on teaching-often housed inside their own department, rather than in collaboration with the teacher colleges.

While every program has an abundance of courses prospective professors must take, and time is a costly premium, I would like to think that this continues to privilege research rather than pedagogy. That's something I can understand. I mostly prefer a gifted scholar then moving toward teaching, rather than the other way around. The consequence of this, however, is that they will continue to be weak in teaching, unless otherwise incentivized to grow as a pedagogue.

I'll take another example to kind of make my point. In the teacher education programs, there's a set course load prospective teachers take. Out of all the pedagogy (including theory) these pupils receive, they will typically be only required to take one course on students with disabilities. Given that at least 10% of the student body have disabilities of some sort, and in each of their classrooms there will be a few under this demographic, they only get one course.

So this would have to be a damn good course, right? Well not really. They typically are a poor man's version of an Abnormal Psych course, without the benefits of a psychology-oriented professor. That means you might get to know about disability diagnosis categories (even though it's in the book, they aren't particularly worried "that you get it"), but they aren't going to help you figure out what are some damn good orientations and strategies for teaching students with different needs. So you kind of get a lackluster orientation toward a sub field of psychology and you don't get any practical employment of what may or may not have been discussed in class.

Granted, much of a teacher program's internal course loads consist of poor derivatives that can be found elsewhere (including teacher technology courses), but that's for another time.

So what happens is that these new (or even master's students) teachers end up having little to no clue how to actually prepare themselves for a classroom environment that *will* happen in every year they teach.

So what do we expect will happen when they are in the classrooms teaching? You guessed it. "Over their heads."

If we are to revitalize higher education's act of teaching and mentoring young (and old) minds for their future, we need to give more thought to preparing them to do so.

But right now, we are rightly concerned about their work as scholars. That realm has much need for reform as well, but it is often a (or the) central component to their jobs. Achieving balance will need to be thought out in the (likely) decades ahead.
 
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nota bene said:
Not all conservatives are "hide-bound, closed-minded, authoritarians," but the more important issue is using one's classroom, irrespective of political lean, is using one's lectern as a bully-pulpit.
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I would also add that it may also impact the orientation toward the coursework. You end up losing a substantial side discussion that either goes on in the field--or what goes on outside the parameters of the field, but will nevertheless impact it.

History professors might do an excellent job of raising discussions about left-wing thought or the impact majoritarian views have on oppressed minorities, but may not be able to express what attracted people to having those views in the first place or whether or not there could be merit in what they were saying.

Education professors might take up the cause of the unionized professional that seems to be overworked and undervalued, but may not do a good job in expressing why there may have been a change in attitudes in the last 60 years, or if certain groups dissatisfied with the status-quo in the education field have reason to be.

Criminal justice departments may do an excellent job highlighting how policies disproportionately impact certain segments of society, sometimes unfairly, but do they give credence to what brought about some of those changes. Further, do they do a good enough job in explaining the mindset of those seemingly standing athwart institutional progress, so as to prepare young people to be able to change minds or exploit their weaknesses?
 
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