SEE HERE:
https://www.realcleareducation.com/speech/
THE 2020 COLLEGE FREE SPEECH RANKINGS.
The College Free Speech Rankings are based on rigorous analysis of five distinct aspects of the culture for free speech on college campuses for all students surveyed. The ranking compares 55 top colleges in the U.S. Higher scores indicate more open climates for free speech. Read below for information about the data and how this ranking was calculated.
The Data
Where does the data come from?
This survey was fielded to 19,969 college students currently enrolled in four-year degree programs at 55 colleges and universities in the United States. The complete list of schools is available below. Students answered a survey of 26 items about their experience and attitudes about free speech and expression on their college campuses. Students also answered an open-ended question about experiences in which they felt unable to express their opinions. To explore the data behind the College Free Speech Rankings, please visit our Insights platform.
How were the students recruited?
The initial sample was drawn from College Pulse’s American College Student Panel™, which includes more than 400,000 verified undergraduate students at more than 1,000 different two- and four-year colleges and universities in all 50 states. Panel members were recruited by a number of methods to ensure student diversity in the panel population, including web advertising, email campaigns, and partnerships with university-affiliated organizations. The 55 colleges were chosen to represent a variety of colleges in the United States, including large public universities, small private colleges, religiously-affiliated colleges such as Brigham Young University, and Ivy League colleges.
How does College Pulse ensure its surveys reflect the views of college students nationally?
In certain circumstances, it makes sense to weight survey data to align with what is known about broader populations to ensure that respondents are representative of the wider population. In the College Free Speech Survey, college weights were applied to the Overall Score to ensure that the demographic distribution of the sample matched the national population of college students. To this end, we applied a post-stratification adjustment based on demographic distributions from multiple data sources, including the 2017 Current Population Survey (CPS), the 2016 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS), and the 2017-18 Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). The post-stratification weight rebalanced the sample based on a number of important benchmark attributes, such as race, gender, class year, voter registration status, and financial aid status. The sample weighting used an iterative proportional fitting (IFP) process that simultaneously balanced the distributions of all variables. Weights are trimmed to prevent individual interviews from having too much influence on the final results.
How do college students complete interviews?
If a panel member is selected to participate in a study, an invitation to complete the survey is sent directly to their student email address. Panelists also receive a notification in the smartphone app alerting them that a survey is ready for them to take. Students can complete the survey using the College Pulse App that is available on iOS and Android platforms. They can also login directly on the College Pulse website to complete the survey on their computer.
How does College Pulse ensure response quality?
In the College Free Speech Survey, College Pulse employed more than 20 demographic categories to target the most representative subsamples of the college panel. To ensure top-quality surveys, College Pulse automatically detects and removes unreliable respondents (such as those who speed through a survey, or give the same response on each question) from the survey.
How does College Pulse validate panelists?
College Pulse uses a two-stage validation process to ensure that all its surveys include only students currently enrolled in four-year colleges or universities. Students are required to provide an .edu email address to join the panel and required to verify that they are currently enrolled either part-time or full-time in a four-year degree program. All invitations to complete surveys are sent using the student’s .edu email address.
The Rankings
Overall Score
The Overall Score is a combination of five sub-components explained in detail below (Openness, Tolerance, Administrative Support, Self-Expression, and Speech Code). These items were summed for a maximum score of 25, then multiplied by four, so that the maximum possible score was 100 points. A total score was then calculated for every student at each university. Higher scores for each component indicate a stronger environment on campus for free speech and expression. The overall score for each college is the weighted average Overall Score of the student body surveyed at that college. Because the survey revealed that student responses on an individual campus often varied widely depending on the student’s political beliefs and demographics, five additional Overall Scores for each college were computed for the following groups of students: (1) Liberals; (2) Conservatives; (3) females; (4) males; and (5) racial minorities.
Tolerance (40%): The Tolerance score is the sum of the responses to six questions about allowing controversial speakers on campus. The question was, “Would you support or oppose your school ALLOWING a speaker on campus who promotes the following idea,” and items included topics such as “Black Lives Matter is a hate group,” “Transgender people have a mental disorder,” “All white people are racist,” “Censoring the news media is necessary,” “Some racial groups are less intelligent than others,” and“Abortion should be completely illegal” on a four-point scale ranging from “strongly support” = 1 to “strongly oppose” = 4. Options were reverse coded such that colleges with more support for controversial speakers received higher scores. A maximum score of 24 points was possible. This score was then rescaled to a maximum of 10, to account for 40% of the overall maximum points.
Openness (40%): To determine Openness, first, students were shown the following question: “Some students say it can be difficult to have conversations about certain issues on campus. Which of the following issues, if any, would you say are difficult to have an open and honest conversation about on your campus?” Option items included Abortion, Affirmative action, Feminism, Gun control, Immigration, The Israeli / Palestinian conflict, Race, and Transgender issues. Each “Not a difficult topic to discuss” response received a code of “1,” for a maximum total Openness Score of 8, meaning that colleges received better scores if students said they were able to discuss more of these topics on their campuses. This score was then rescaled to a maximum of 10.
Self-Expression (12%): Students were asked whether they “Personally ever felt you could not express your opinion on a subject because of how students, a professor, or the administration would respond.” Student responses saying that they had never experienced this sentiment received a score of 3, while responses reporting this sentiment received a score of 0. The maximum total score was 3.
Administrative Support (4%): Administrative Support includes two questions. First, “Does your college administration make it clear to students that free speech is protected on your campus?” “Yes” answers received a code of 0.5 points, and “No” answers received a code of zero. Second, “If a controversy over offensive speech were to occur on your campus, would the administration be more likely to …” The option “Defend the speaker’s right to express their views” received a code of 0.5 points, while “Punish the speaker for making the statement” received a code of zero. The maximum total score was 1.
Speech Code (4%): The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) rates the written policies governing student speech at more than 470 higher-education institutions in the United States. Four ratings are possible: Warning, Red, Yellow, or Green (actually “red light,” “yellow light,” and “green light”). A Warning rating is assigned to a private college or university when its policies clearly and consistently state that it prioritizes other values over a commitment to freedom of speech. Colleges with this rating received a score of -1. A rating of Red indicates that the institution has at least one policy that both clearly and substantially restricts freedom of speech. These colleges also received a score of -1. Colleges with Yellow ratings have policies that restrict a more limited amount of protected expression or, by virtue of their vague wording, could too easily be used to restrict protected expression. This rating received a score of 0. Finally, the policies of an institution with a Green rating do not seriously threaten speech, although this rating does not indicate that a college actively supports free expression. This rating received a score of 1.
Ideological Diversity
The Ideological Diversity score represents how dominant any single political ideology is on a given campus. To calculate this score, first, students were shown the following question: “Using a seven-point scale from extremely liberal–point 1–to extremely conservative–point 7– where would you place yourself on this scale?” Option items included “1—Extremely liberal,” “2—Liberal,” “3—Slightly liberal,” “4—Moderate,” “5—Slightly conservative,” “6—Conservative,” and “7—Extremely conservative.” These responses were then grouped into three ranges: liberal (1-3), moderate (4), and conservative (5-7). Following the methodology of , each college received a single score reflecting the relative presence of these groups. Higher numbers indicate more ideological diversity, with a maximum possible score of 100.
President Trump Approval
Students were asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling his job as president?” Students could answer “Approve” or “Disapprove.” Students who responded “Approve” were coded as President Trump Approvers. Students who responded “Disapprove” were coded as Trump Disapprovers.
The Team
Nathan Harden, RealClearEducation
Robin Jayaswal, College Pulse
Terren Klein, College Pulse
Timothy Lentz, College Pulse
Nico Perrino, FIRE
Anne Schwichtenberg, PhD, College Pulse
Robert Shibley, FIRE
Sean Stevens, PhD, FIRE
About FIRE
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and sustaining the individual rights of students and faculty members at America’s colleges and universities. These rights include freedom of speech, freedom of association, due process, legal equality, religious liberty, and sanctity of conscience—the essential qualities of liberty.
About College Pulse
College Pulse is a survey research and analytics company dedicated to understanding the attitudes, preferences and behaviors of today’s college students. College Pulse delivers custom data-driven marketing and research solutions, utilizing its unique American College Student Panel™ that includes over 400,000 undergraduate college student respondents from more than 1,000 two- and four-year colleges and universities in all 50 states. For more information, visit https://collegepulse.com/ or College Pulse’s social Twitter account @CollegeInsights.
“...makes it abundantly clear that those enrolled in New England are notably different....”
Who knew?
Every professor in the US should have a mandatory one year sabbatical in Venezuela, living on the economy.
Are college students “taught” to be ignorant of their history and the law?
Are students taught to substitute critical thinking for critical race theory?
Are college students snowflakes that can’t bear any opposing opinions?
As a former college/university professor, I can emphatically answer “YES!” to all of these.
I would venture a guess that there is a relationship, perhaps not a correlation, in how college students and their parents politically identify. Additionally, once these minds full of mush get a real job, get married, have children, and have a mortgage that they become more conservative.
Other than Hillsdale College, conservatives need to set up at least one post-graduate school, with the purpose of real world education for elected, appointed and hired government jobs.
For example, right now, newly elected freshman congressmen only get a week or two of briefings after traveling to Washington, D.C. Imagine if they had a few months? And what if their new staff had already been trained for their jobs?
And in realistic terms, everyone who comes to D.C. with a purpose needs to know the ledger of friends and enemies, and the techniques used by the enemies, foreign and domestic, to get you compromised, blackmailed, and in trouble.
Even ground level stuff, like renting apartments, finding restaurants, getting transportation, scheduling public and private and party functions, timetabling all sorts of things, etc.
“Inside every progressive is a totalitarian screaming to get out.” — David Horowitz