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Posted on 07/20/2026 5:47:41 AM PDT by george76
According to the latest Gallup poll, only 38% of U.S. adults have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education. One of the Gallup experts told Fox News that one of the key reasons for the continued slide in public trust is “the perception that there’s a political agenda being taught.” That perception is well documented after most departments purged their ranks of any republican, conservative, or libertarian faculty members. At the same time, many faculty oppose the long-standing principle of institutional neutrality for universities, the subject of a recent debate that I had with the President of the American Association of University Professors.
Gallup’s expert added that there is also a view that we are “not teaching people the right kinds of things they need to succeed in the job once they finish.”
As I have previously written, this generation of administrators and faculty has destroyed not just public trust in our institutions but their financial viability. Colleges are closing at an alarming rate as both tuition and revenue fall. Yet, faculty members would prefer to lose their jobs than their bias in hiring and teaching.
According to Gallup, roughly a third of polled individuals cited partisan bias or indoctrination on college campuses. Bias was the leading reason for given for the lack of trust, ahead of tuition costs. That is a large chunk of potential applicants and their families. Worse yet, they are not wrong.
Our campuses have been ideological echo chambers where collective orthodoxy is more prominent than academic inquiry. This group think has created an overtly hostile environment for more than half of this country that consider themselves conservatives or libertarians. As schools struggle to maintain financial stability, they are literally cutting away half of their potential applicant pool.
Currently, only 37% of Americans report having “some” confidence in the institution. In any other industry or area, that record of alienation and mistrust would prompt massive changes in management. In higher education, however, colleges and universities remain captive to administrators and faculty members who replicate their views and values to the exclusion of many others.
The result is evident in multiple surveys which reveal widespread self-censorship among students, particularly conservative students. When I confronted a Harvard Law professor in a debate at Harvard Law School with those surveys, he responded by calling these students “conservative snowflakes.”
It did not matter that only a third of Harvard students felt comfortable expressing their views in classes or on campus. Since Harvard has also shown the same bias in admissions, only roughly nine percent of the students identify as conservative. Thus, the vast majority of the students who are saying that they self-censor are liberals. This is the environment that the current generation of administrators and faculty have created.
As I have previously written, parents and students who value free speech must increasingly look to public universities where faculty are subject to constitutional guarantees. Public universities may be the final line of defense for free-speech advocates.
We now largely have two systems of higher education for those seeking education with a diversity of opinions and viewpoints. Except for outliers like the University of Chicago and other private universities holding the line on free speech, the orthodoxy found at private universities remains a barrier to many conservative and independent thinkers.
If we are to protect these bastions of free speech, legislatures will need to play a more active role in addressing the exclusion of both faculty candidates and speakers on public campuses. Too many faculty members continue to take the view that citizens are a captive audience expected to continue funding their departments, while excluding conservative or dissenting views held by many, if not most, citizens in a given state.
If faculty members want to continue maintaining echo chambers for their own viewpoints, they should have to seek private donors to sustain such intolerance and orthodoxy.
Legislatures can demand evidence that schools are maintaining intellectually diverse faculties in determining the level of continued support from citizens.
When some of us have argued for such campaigns, academics hypocritically claim that we are calling for political litmus tests or hiring based on political parties. It is an absurd argument that I have previously addressed, including in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
The call is for donors and legislators to withhold funding until they see real reforms, including greater diversity on faculties. They are not directing the hiring but looking at the results. The faculty members objecting to such calls have watched passively (or actively supported) the purging of conservative or libertarian faculty from universities and colleges.
When confronted by their own obvious ideological litmus tests, they shrug. Some acknowledge that their departments are overwhelmingly liberal, but insist that they just cannot find “competent” or “intellectually promising” conservatives. A few will admit that they do not believe that conservative views have a place in their departments.
It is impossible to deny the purging of faculties to create an academic echo chamber. If a large corporation effectively eliminated women or minorities while claiming no conscious discrimination, they would be trounced in court.
For years, I have raised concerns about the intolerance in higher education and surveys showing that many departments no longer have a single Republican as faculty members replicate their own views and values. There is no evidence that any faculty members (including those acknowledging the loss of virtually all faculty from the right of center) are honestly willing to reform their schools.
That ideological echo chamber is hardly an enticement for many facing rising tuition costs and relatively little hope of being taught by faculty with opposing views.
A Georgetown study recently found that only nine percent of law school professors identify as conservative at the top 50 law schools — almost identical to the percentage of Trump voters found in the new poll.
We are watching the demise of American higher education by its own hand. It will be up to legislators and donors to save these institutions from themselves.
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We no longer have higher education; we have a cult.
Everywhere one looks the quality of an “educated” person is not measured in wisdom, it is measured in the ability to parrot the current social dogma of the globalist elite.
Time to defund higher rioting and cut back on the number of institutions of higher programming. The kiddies are spending a lot of money just to wear masks and wear goofy Palestinian pizza place tablecloths as hats. Real haters..
It’s called credentialism.
And the jig is up.
Good luck to all those Deep State diploma mills now left holding the bag.
I know conservative publications focus on liberal bias, but the public’s main issue is the cost-benefit ratio. The public wouldn’t care about liberal bias if their kids could go to college for a relatively cheap price and get a good job. The issue is that kids pay a fortune and can’t get a job. That is the “tipping point” we have reached. Unless you are working in a certain group of careers or going to a small group of elite colleges, going to a third-rate college for a social science or even a general business degree for the prices they charge are not worth it. Add the insane liberal faculty on top of it is adding insult to injury.
Public schools a line of defense? I think not. They are just as left-wing as the ivory towers.
Exactly
I think you hit the nail right on the head. The issue with most folks is not political bias. It’s the bang for the buck.
One way to address this would be to promote community colleges more. They are relatively inexpensive. And I would argue that basic courses taught there are actually better than ones taught at expensive universities.
University professor: He was hired to do research. He teaches only because he has to.
Community College professor: He was hired to teach.
FTA
According to Gallup,
<><>bias was the leading reason given for lack of trust,
<><>bias was well ahead of ahead of tuition costs concerns.
<><>a shocking 1/3 of those polled cited partisan bias
<><>some cited “indoctrination” on college campuses for lack of trust.
Worse yet, they are not wrong. A generation of administrators and faculty has
destroyed not just public trust in our institutions but their financial viability.
<><>Colleges are closing at an alarming rate
<><>both tuition and revenue fall.
<><>seems they prefer to lose their jobs
<><>ditching bias in hiring and teaching is untouchable.
I somewhat disagree; the current form of political bias is literally corrupting education so much as to make it impossible to get any “bang.” Students are literally being taught things that contradict real science and actual truths such as to become more incompetent, all in the name of political narratives.
Racist math anyone or how about racial bias in medical assessments!
Exactly!
How can one teach science, biology or history yet believe there are multiple genders, that only white people can be racist, or Israel is committing genocide whenever it fights back?
After 4 years in the military I was not ready to work so I parked my ass in the university lecture halls for 4 years under the G.I. Bill. Worked for me as tuition was $100 a semester in the mid-70’s. It was a nice time-out from the real world. Today, what’s out there? Working retail at $16/hr? At 40 hours per week that’s $32k/yr-not too bad a start but how many 18 year olds can put up with shift supervisors who make a dollar or two more? Young folk like to hang out while just making enough to pay the bills. In the mean time the people doing those jobs are mostly from Mexico. Back then there were plenty of share rentals. Today those rentals are prohibitive due to immigration-am I right?
All I’m saying is I miss the 70’s. Foghat. CSNY. Day on the Green. Boones Farm and Annie Green Springs. Ah nostalgia!
You are certainly correct. Leftists have corrupted most of higher education. It’s even seeping into the sciences. It will be very difficult to walk this back.
My point is that this corruption is not the primary concern of most parents. Many of them are not even aware of it. Their primary concern is cost.
I dunno. Maybe there should be an organization of inexpensive colleges whose mission statement has a conservative tilt. They teach about free markets, personal liberty, etc.
But no religious tilt. That should be a personal thing.
That organization would have to police itself.
I was a chemistry major back in the day. I was required to take a few humanities courses for the degree. Those humanities professors all presented a balanced approach. Some were even anti-communist, and told you so.
There’s probably not a single public college anywhere in the country that’s like that today.
🙁
Chinese Communist Party run cult ,LOL
You make a lot of sense.
Stop doing that.
L
How stupid do you have to be to think there are 3 sexes?
Yup
Legion academia
From which we now have
Legion lawfare
Legion media
Legion pharma
Legion communist politicians
Academia is now a class hierarchy of a defacto guild that acts as gatekeepers of their legions.
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