Tackling Liberal Bias in Higher Education
This episode of the Utterly Moderate Podcast deals with liberal bias in higher education and what to do about it, with a specific focus on the field of sociology.
According to Gallup, a strong majority (68%) of Americans believe that higher education is headed in the wrong direction. Barely more than a third (36%) of Americans express a high level of confidence in U.S. colleges and universities, down from 57% only a decade ago.
You can see the reasons for this low confidence below, including political agendas, wrong focus/teaching the wrong things, and cost/expenses.
Is this concern about “political agendas” warranted? Let’s first take a look at the politics of American professors.
In a 2016-2017 survey, UCLA researchers found a liberal-to-conservative (L:C) ratio of 5:1 among American college professors.
Other studies show a much larger gap. When Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens analyzed the voter registrations of college professors, for instance, they found a Democrat-to-Republican (D:R) ratio of 8:1. Among the same sample, they found the D:R political donor ratio to be a whopping 95:1.
A discrepancy between the public—American voters are about evenly split between Democrats and Republicans—and the professoriate is not a problem by itself. It becomes a problem if it negatively impacts the teaching and research being done at American colleges.
On this count, it seems to have become a problem.
Many academics blur the line between activism and research, letting their leftist beliefs and values skew their work. This includes a number of big claims about systemic racism, police shootings, implicit bias, microaggressions, free markets, sexism, sex differences, transgender issues, single parenthood, IQ, and more. It is of course not the case that all or even most of the teaching and research happening on college campuses is corrupted by ideology. But far too many academics—perhaps most notably in fields in the humanities, social sciences, and education—make high-profile claims about social phenomena that go well beyond what the evidence will support, and these claims frequently align with leftwing ideologies. This can distort the public discourse, workplace practices, and social policy.
You can read a much deeper discussion of this in the book The Poisoning of the American Mind, as well as the documentary of the same name (below).
On this podcast episode, we discuss liberal bias in higher education, why it is a problem, and what we might do about it. Enjoy!