Posted on 04/04/2008 8:50:22 AM PDT by Santa Fe_Conservative
Conservatives complain that college professors lean left when it comes to politics — and the data mostly show that's true. But new research suggests the personal politics of academics have little effect on what their students think.
The research, to be published this year in the journal PS: Political Science and Politics, analyzes separate surveys on the attitudes of about 6,800 students at 38 universities and how they changed between their freshman and senior years. Then it examines whether those results are affected by the political attitudes of the faculty at their particular schools.
The short answer is no, according to researchers Gordon Hewitt of Hamilton College, an active Democrat, and Mack Mariani of Xavier University, who has worked for Republicans.
It is true that schools with a more liberal faculty tended to attract more liberal students. But on the question of how students' views evolved, there was little impact, Hewitt said in a phone interview Thursday.
About 60 percent of students didn't change their political outlooks much during college. Those that did moved slightly to the left, but the change mirrored that of 18- to 24-year-olds generally.
(Excerpt) Read more at denverpost.com ...
And beyond grading there’s the issue of patronage. If some professor doesn’t write a good recommendation, the student’s graduate and professional prospects are significantly affected.
“But new research suggests the personal politics of academics have little effect on what their students think.”
Most students regard the liberal can as game playing and pay no attention to it.
“...researchers Gordon Hewitt of Hamilton College, an active Democrat, and Mack Mariani of Xavier University, who has worked for Republicans.”
Note: neither researcher is a Republican. This is a CYA exercise for universities and their professors who are 90% liberal and 100% biased against conservatives. This will be one of the bogus studies cited by academia to try to negate the fact that they are biased.
Certainly when it comes to religion, the data shows that kids are far less likely to be religious when they leave college than when they arrive.
liberal cant not liberal can
They wouldn’t bother to try to spread this propaganda is it weren’t true.
I meet all kinds of youngsters coming from college and they are horribly swayed by what they were indoctrinated into in college. They actually believe there is no way their professors could possibly lie to them. They have the same beliefs of the national media.
But they probably keep conservatives from going into graduates studies in some fields.
Me too—I went to the liberal University of California at Davis and then the liberal Georgetown University and every year I became more conservative. . .
I have bookmarked hundreds of stories the refute this study.
In an intellectually difficult environment,
Magical thinking sticks out like a sore thumb.
In Engineering school, my professors with
“insufficiently rigorous” opinions were
generally held in disdain
This was even more true in Medical school
That the conservative ideas actually work in the real world and the liberal ones don’t is so true.
I took Political Science at Indiana University in the late ‘70’ - early ‘80’s. We had a prof for “Comparative Political Systems” who had obviously not spent a day in a real job in his life. The class should have been called “Soviet Communism Here & Now.” He espoused all the usual garbage about “workers controlling the means of production.” I was working my way through college doing commercial construction. I knew perfectly well that turning the means of production over to construction workers was going have 3 results:
1. The Workers Committee was going to wind up in the parking lot with a keg of beer and a bucket of chicken,
2. The “means of production” (company tools) were going to disappear into the back of the “workers committee” pickups;
3. The building was not going to get built.
What a dunderhead. But, in the early 1990s, Myles Brand appointed him Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. No wonder IU is so screwed up. Now Myles Brand can do the same damage to the NCAA.
When I was in college in the sixties I exited a degree in History because the History Department was too left wing.
Made it harder to give them raises at year end.
Ended up with a business degree. I would have preferred a History degree but I would not have done well in that marxist environment. Probably would have ended up driving a truck.
So, hey prof's: no harm, no foul. Keep up the good work!
.
One thing successful students learn early is to determine what the professor wants to hear, and then parrot that back to him. If the prof wants liberal dogma, then that’s what he gets. It’s all about grades.
My son joined the Marines the day he turned 18. He went to Moorpark College until he was sent to boot camp. He had a teacher that was a liberal and he asked me what to do about a liberal teacher. I told him it was just a game and to play along with it because his grade was more important than trying to make a statement.
My kid went on to become Recon and while out of the Marines, jumped at the opportunity to return and go to Iraq. In his mind it was an opportunity to get involved with something exciting. My kid is an adrenaline junkie.
After he came home he was lost as to what to do with his life that would keep the adrenaline flowing. He tried to get on the Los Angeles Police Department but the fact he went to Iraq was a deal killer.
He got on to the Los Angeles County Fire Department. Apparently (unlike the Los Angeles Police Department) being a Marine Recon was not a determent to a job well done. 22 of 23 applicants were in the service. The only non-service recruitment was a woman. My son told me that she held her own.
The point of all this is to keep involved with your kids. Let them know what is BS and where to look for the truth in news.
Sorry that after Duncan Hunter I can not point them to Fox News, Hannity and O’Riely.
In my political science class in 2001, I was the only conservative in the class. And believe me, the other students weren’t well informed about political issues. In the military, it’s almost a 100% reversal! At least in my unit it is. We’re pretty much all conservatives. Sometimes it feels like I joined the Republican Army :-)
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