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Rethinking the Plight of Conservatives in Higher Education
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dmacfour Offline
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Post: #1
Rethinking the Plight of Conservatives in Higher Education
Is academia a massive liberal breeding ground? Are conservative viewpoints actively suppressed? Are students being indoctrinated?

According to this conservative researcher, no:

Quote:Whereas my conservative colleagues tend to portray academia as rife with partisan conflict, my research into the impact of politics in higher education tells a different story. Although the Right faces special challenges in higher education, our research offers little evidence that conservative students or faculty are the victims of widespread ideological persecution.

Quote:Whereas liberal and conservative students have very similar grades and nearly identical levels of satisfaction with their overall college experience, right-leaning students are far more likely to select “practical” majors that are less likely to lead to advanced degrees. Their emphasis on vocational fields such as business and criminal justice permits them to move directly into the workforce.

Quote: While we observed a slight shift in favor of the Democrats (representing an average 0.06 points on a five-point scale), the change occurred irrespective of the professor’s political orientation. Thus, while students’ partisan orientations did shift over the course of time, the changes are hardly what one might expect if faculty members were systematically indoctrinating their students.

Quote:Only 7 percent of Republican faculty believed that discrimination against those with “right-wing” views was a serious problem on their campus, compared with 8 percent of Democratic faculty who expressed concerns about discrimination against those with “left-wing” views.

Quote:Even if those on the right face special obstacles in the publication process, it is obvious from our results in The Still Divided Academy that many Republicans do work and thrive in higher education. To the extent that academia’s ideological imbalance is harmful either to higher education or to society as a whole, it is not at all clear how to improve the situation. Certainly, some of the imbalance is a matter of personal choice. Absent any external pressures, it is highly improbable that conservatives would ever be represented in higher education in numbers anywhere approaching their standing in society as a whole. Still, the mere perception that higher education is hostile to conservative values probably contributes to the Left’s dominance within higher education. Since it would be perfectly absurd (although beautifully ironic) to reengineer the politics of academia through quotas or special admission policies, there is no easy solution on the horizon. Nevertheless, one potentially important way of improving the Right’s representation in academia is to stop overstating the challenges conservatives face on campus. By promoting their peculiar brand of right-wing victimization, activists run the risk of exacerbating academia’s political imbalance by needlessly discouraging conservatives from considering careers in higher education. As much as I enjoy being one of academia’s token conservatives, I would prefer to see a bit more ideological balance within the professoriate. Whereas conservative students benefit from hearing the Left’s alternative worldview, too many liberal undergraduates complete their four-year degree unaware that educated and thoughtful people sometimes vote for political leaders like George W. Bush.

http://www.aaup.org/article/rethinking-p...pV8JfkrJhE
01-12-2016 07:17 PM
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stinkfist Offline
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Post: #2
RE: Rethinking the Plight of Conservatives in Higher Education
my first is the rhetorical, "who or why would anyone give a shite" (academia = libtard is implied on this board or any other concept of objectivity)

which leads to, "this is how people think they can make bank as a 'researcher'? "

all I got was, "does that puppy lick the hundos off papa and 'swallower' the cream at the same time?"

but that's just me 03-wink
01-13-2016 03:11 AM
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