Up the Academy

Campus Report ^ | October 31, 2008 | Malcolm A. Kline

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Up the Academy

by: Malcolm A. Kline, October 31, 2008

In-house audits that Academia inflicts upon itself invariably give the Ivory Tower a clean bill of health but a recent study at least attempts to scratch beneath the surface. “Our analysis of 38 private colleges and 6,807 student respondents indicates that, consistent with a number of previous studies, faculty members are predominantly liberal and Democratic,” Mack D. Mariani and Gordon J. Hewitt write in the October 2008 issue of P. S.: Political Science and Politics, a monthly journal. “We find little evidence, however, that faculty ideology is associated with changes in students’ ideological orientation.”

“The students at colleges with more liberal faculties were not statistically more likely to move to the left than students at other institutions.” Therein lies the rub for it poses the question of just how left-of-center those students are and, of course, those institutions themselves.

This was a line of inquiry that Mariani and Hewitt were unable to pursue. Moreover, it also leaves unexamined another key trend, namely, what is actually taught.

Mariani, who teaches at Xavier, and Hewitt, an assistant dean at Hamilton College, admit as much in their article. “Of course, this finding does not necessarily mean that professors act fairly or without ideological bias in their teaching, subject matter, or selection of reading materials,” they write. “Professors could, after all, be failing to indoctrinate students despite their concerted efforts to do so!”

“Regardless of any biases (intentional or unintentional) that professors bring to their teaching, the findings presented here may help alleviate the concern that students, on a widespread basis, are adopting the political positions of their liberal professors.” Then again, maybe not, particularly given the claim the scholars make in the very next paragraph....