Posted on 03/30/2006 8:40:03 AM PST by Attillathehon
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Study Casts Doubt on Claims That Conservative Students Face Discrimination in Classes By JENNIFER JACOBSON
A study showing that conservative and liberal students do equally well in courses with politically charged content casts doubt on conservative activists' claims that liberal faculty members routinely discriminate against their conservative students.
The study found no difference in the grades conservative and liberal students receive in sociology, cultural anthropology, and women's-studies courses. It also found that conservative students tend to earn higher grades than their liberal classmates in business and economics courses.
Titled "What's in a Grade? Academic Success and Political Orientation," the study was conducted by Markus Kemmelmeier, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Nevada at Reno, who was the lead author; Cherry Danielson, a research fellow at Wabash College; and Jay Basten, a lecturer in kinesiology at the University of Michigan.
The researchers published their paper in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin last October, but it has attracted little attention, even as activists like David Horowitz continue to press state legislatures to adopt a so-called academic bill of rights to make college campuses more "intellectually diverse" and more tolerant of conservatives.
Mr. Kemmelmeier's study follows two others, published within the past seven years, that found that conservative students tended to earn slightly lower grades in majors such as sociology and anthropology. The professor, who describes his politics as slightly left of center, says he did not undertake the study to contribute to the ongoing discussion of political bias on college campuses, but to address ongoing questions in social psychology about the choices people make regarding their interaction with organizations and what personal characteristics contribute to their success within those organizations.
The earlier studies are "consistent with what Horowitz might suggest -- that conservative students are actually not doing all that well in fields that are thought more left-leaning," says Mr. Kemmelmeier. But there's a problem with that argument, he says: The students' performance "has nothing to do with bias" on the part of their professors.
In a four-year longitudinal study that began in the late 1990s, he surveyed 3,890 students at a major public university in the Midwest. Asked to describe their political orientation, 2.7 percent identified themselves as far left, 34.6 percent as liberal, 42 percent as middle of the road, 20 percent as conservative, and 1.2 percent as far right.
Mr. Kemmelmeier then compared the transcripts of a variety of students taking the same courses, specifically courses taught in the economics department and the business school (which Mr. Kemmelmeier considered "hierarchy-enhancing," or conservative) and those taught in American culture, African-American studies, cultural anthropology, education, nursing, sociology, and women's studies (which he considered "hierarchy-attenuating," or liberal).
He found that in the latter courses, students' political orientations had no effect on their grades -- which, the study says, suggests that disciplines such as sociology and anthropology "might be more accepting of a broad range of student perspectives," while economics and business classes "appear to be more sensitive to whether student perspectives are compatible with those of the academic discipline."
In economics and business classes, the study found, conservative students earned better grades. It also found that conservative students were likely to graduate with higher GPA's in those courses than liberal students who entered college with similar SAT scores.
According to the study, conservative students might have an advantage over their peers in such courses because the conservative students might view the courses as more relevant to their future careers and therefore might be motivated to work harder.
Also, the study notes, conservative students might be "more comfortable" with such subjects "because making money is more likely to be a personal goal for them than for liberal students." Moreover, in economics and business courses, "teaching methods and classroom structure might be more amenable to conservative than liberal students, for example, by emphasizing competition over cooperation."
But the study's authors say that liberal students are unlikely to face discrimination from conservative faculty members in such courses. To discriminate against liberal students, professors would need to know the political views of individual students in what are typically large classes; it's unlikely that professors would know their students that well, Mr. Kemmelmeier says. He adds that many professors who teach big courses don't grade their students' papers themselves -- teaching assistants do.
Mr. Kemmelmeier and his colleagues acknowledge that instructors sometimes do grade students to reward or punish them for behavior not at all related to their academic performance.
Still, he does not deny that conservative students -- and sometimes liberal students -- feel sidelined by their professors' views, if those views are openly expressed. "I'm not yet clear that this means the professor will really grade them down," Mr. Kemmelmeier says. "I find it plausible, but I’ve seen no evidence of it."
I find this statement an indication of bias in the article.
Absolutely. The Clintons never had any problem at all with making as much money as they could. Wasn't that what Whitewater was all about?
I wonder who runs,and writes for,The Chronicles of Higher Education?
Ever notice how liberal academics always find a way to create a "study" that says what they want it to say?
I had lots of leftist professors, but I never got a bad grade because of my views. I was harangued once by a prof in class (he apologized and I got the A in that one, though).
Conservative students definately face discrimination in class, but whether it affects their grades or not is another matter. The discrimination is usually verbal in nature. I know firsthand as a freshman in college, even at a very conservative school, we still have our liberal idiots.
Could it be that conservative students, who are naturally smarter, would have received higher grades than the liberal students? Time to independently test the abilities of conservatives versus liberals.
I failed a class last semester because i wrote that W should not be tried as a war criminal. Silly me, the assingment was why he should be, not if he should be. damn liberals!
I could be wrong, but I imagine that number is pretty low.
Where are they going to find a control group of conservative students in a lefty-discipline class to judge their results against?
Honestly, though, of my liberal colleagues, I see very little GRADE discrimination, and never have. That's not the problem: it's the indoctrination.
And the very fact that there are such courses as "Women's Studies" and "African American Topics" demonstrates a bias.
I never considered grades to be a big point. I just hate the environment and indoctrination.
At Columbia Law School, I was identifiably and vocally conservative in classes where it warranted it (Constitutional law, criminal law, for example, but not Securities law, which is apolitical). The professors were uniformly liberal, uniformly argued with me, and uniformly gave me good grades in the courses.
At the Sorbonne, I was identifiably conservative and pro-American in courses where there was interaction with the professors, and in oral examinations. And I generally received good grades there too, for knowledge of the material. Where I didn't receive good grades, it was due to lack of subject matter knowledge.
My experience in the law, anyway, is that law school professors in France and America, at the schools I have attended, are very intelligent people, generally to the left (or far left) in their opinions, not shy about their opinions, but that when they grade students, it is on knowledge of the course material and on the logic and style of their arguments.
This was also my experience in undergraduate courses in Paris and in America, with the exception of an English teacher in university who was horrified by an intentionally immoral position I took in a daring paper defending an evil character in Shakespeare. The professor announced himself "unconvinced" by my argument and gave me a "D" on the paper (and a C in the course as a result).
The argument WAS immoral and offensive, although it was quite well written, if I recall, so it was a clear case of censorship-by-grade. But that was the only time it ever happened, in years and years of education, on two continents.
I don't think the bias is as strong when it comes to grading as it is when it comes to professors stating their opinions.
From Kammelmeier's website:
Research interests:
My current research interests include the study of culture in its various facets. This includes patterns of individualism-collectivism across various societies, as well as influences of cultural values on the framing of public policy issues, e.g., assisted death or affirmative action policies.
Further, I am studying the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) influence of cultural symbols on self-related thoughts and behavior (e.g., the American flag).
I have always been involved in intergroup research in one form or another. My focus has been how stereotypes and intergroup attitudes tend to be influenced by, but also recreate social hierarchy between different groups on society. Occasionally, I find somewhat paradoxical effects such that individuals with an egalitarian orientation are more likely to show biases than those who do not share such value commitments. And don't underestimate the influence the impact of apparently unifying political and cultural icons, which turn out to facilitate the rejection, rather than inclusion of those on the fringe of society! Other current interest include attitudes between the hearing and the deaf, Americans' responses to the Abu Ghraib abuses (and the framing thereof).
And the titles of some of his papers:
The effects of race and social dominance orientation in simulated juror decision making. Journal of Applied Social Psychology
Authoritarianism and candidate support in the U.S. presidential elections of 1996 and 2000.
Racial-ethnic self-schemas
Individualism, collectivism and authoritarianism in seven societies
Individualism and attitudes toward affirmative action: Evidence from priming studies.
Individualism, authoritarianism and attitudes toward assisted death: Cross-cultural, cross-regional and experimental evidence.
hostile environment for people not as outspoken as you are, however.
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