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True or false?
If there has been a conspiracy among liberal faculty members to influence students, “they’ve done a pretty bad job,” said A. Lee Fritschler, a professor of public policy at George Mason University and an author of the new book “Closed Minds? Politics and Ideology in American Universities” (Brookings Institution Press).
The notion that students are induced to move leftward “is a fantasy,” said Jeremy D. Mayer, another of the book’s authors. When it comes to shaping a young person’s political views, “it is really hard to change the mind of anyone over 15,” said Mr. Mayer, who did extensive research on faculty and students.
Here is the story.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on November 5, 2008 at 06:27 AM in Education | Permalink
Comments
Isn't the bigger objection the amount to which the faculty, lopsided as it is, shapes the academic debate and excludes voices that do not conform or can not find the intellectual space to develop ideas in the collaborative manner demanded by modern academic life?
Posted by: Matthew at Nov 5, 2008 7:59:48 AM
Really?
The required readings (outside of economics and the sciences) are nearly 100% liberal viewpoints.
I have, on many occasions, had professors that outright ridiculed any viewpoints that were not liberal creating an environment were the back and forth of ideas was discouraged for fear of ridicule and retribution. This alone means a lot since students who would be exposed to differing ideas are forced only to hear one viewpoint - that of their liberal professor.
The only time I ever stood up in class and challenged the professor was during my freshman year in college. Our English professor said that all white people, by their nature, want to enslave others. That was too much for me to handle. I looked around to all my compatriots and they seemed to accept this notion as I could not see any visible reaction on their faces. So I mentioned to our highly educated, enlightened, Columbia trained English professor that all races have enslaved people and that slavery was hardly limited to just white people and that white people are no more apt todo so than any other culture. She argued with me and then the next day she apologized as she probably recognized that such talk could get her into trouble.
I would argue that in nearly all my non-science classes extreme liberal views are foisted on the students and unless someone stands up to call them on it, the students will readily accept their hogwash -- and believe it!
My question for the people who made the study is how can the students know they are being influenced by liberal professors if all they hear is liberalism? They have nothing to distinguish it from!
Posted by: Robert at Nov 5, 2008 7:59:59 AM
It's not that the professors make conservatives into liberals. The problem is that already moderately liberal students don't hear the counter-viewpoint and stay liberal. So, there isn't even an opportunity for right-of-center positions to win the debate and gain converts. So, even if 2% of the student body flips from conservative to liberal due to faculty views and no liberals switch their position, that would have a massive effect.
Posted by: Gene2 at Nov 5, 2008 8:11:21 AM
I agree, professors do a bad job convincing students of most things. The problem is simply, undergraduates are not expected to understand formalized proofs, so professors simply make statements that the students are expected to memorize and recite on test day.
Campuses are no more liberal today than 30 years ago, but they are vastly more populated. Maybe the real story is it takes a more intellectually stimulated person to be liberal.
Posted by: brainwarped at Nov 5, 2008 8:16:11 AM
What about the teachers they have before 15?
Posted by: Let them eat Thomas Paine at Nov 5, 2008 8:24:11 AM
I'm glad I was a "science" major. I only had to take 1 class where the professor was obviously a communist (by his own admission).
Posted by: Andy at Nov 5, 2008 8:34:11 AM
Hard to change after 15? I changed my mind in college and I am sure that many others have, too.
Posted by: Rich Berger at Nov 5, 2008 8:53:18 AM
Phew! I can stop worrying about all the libertarians who go to GMU and get seduced by the views of Tyler "Big Government Ain't So Bad in a Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma" Cowen.
Posted by: Bob Murphy at Nov 5, 2008 8:57:27 AM
I became a libertarian due to a professor I had in undergrad.
Posted by: Warren at Nov 5, 2008 9:08:56 AM
I actually had a very different experience in college. My education in economics, and the influence of two professors, one stridently free-market and the other a hysterically acerbic member of the Austrian School, changed me from a self-conscious Christian conservative into a cocksure libertarian and free-market proselytizer. The skeptic's attitude I gained from these two professors honed my abilities to stand up to dogma disguised as science.
Posted by: Brian Shelley at Nov 5, 2008 9:16:17 AM
I became a libertarian because of Rush (Not Limbaugh). I'm so sure professors have zero marginal effect.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 5, 2008 9:21:16 AM
The academic article mentioned in the news article is "Indoctrination U.? Faculty Ideology and Changes in Student Political Orientation" by Mack D. Mariani and Gordon J. Hewitt. Its on Cambridge University Press website if you have access to it.
The authors do observe an increase in a net 10% shift of students from the right to the left from freshman year to senior year, but they discount that movement as "indoctrination" by saying that the movement is towards the general population trend for the age group. I don't really buy that argument e.g. why is it the population trend and why is it moving towards it?
Someone ask about movements to the left and right, the survey showed 27% left and 16% to the right.
On to the regressions, they found no significant effect at the institutional level i.e. average political makeup of the university on students. Of course you really want regressions at the student level with information on what class they took by what professor. Classes that are not capable of being politically charged e.g. engineering are probably biasing the results down. Since the student level data is not possible, at the very least they should have run regressions of sub-samples such as different colleges or departments and then see the results.
Posted by: James at Nov 5, 2008 9:24:33 AM
I chuckled to myself at the thought that liberals might use these two academic papers as irrefutable evidence that professors can't affect political views.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 5, 2008 9:26:17 AM
"I chuckled to myself at the thought that liberals might use these two academic papers as irrefutable evidence that professors can't affect political views."
Then it should be very easy to do a study showing that they do influence students. You have a large study group and a fairly stable group of professors/teachers at most schools. I have never been happy with beliefs without data. One would think the AEI or CATO would be willing to sponsor such a study. If you wish to so readily discount the above research, then offer your own. "everyone knows" does not, and should not, count in academia.
Steve
Posted by: steve at Nov 5, 2008 10:00:19 AM
Yeah, I love the idea that not exposing a certain set of political ideological view points can have no effect on the ideological viewpoints of students.
While professors can and do suck at persuasion...it is pretty pathetic that a conservative college student can graduate and never read anything by Milton Friedman or Hayek.
Posted by: Danny at Nov 5, 2008 10:03:20 AM
People who do not see anything wrong with teaching generation after generation on Das Kapital Economics by Samuelson probably have totally different concept of indoctrination.
And I do agree – there is not much left to indoctrinate after 15. If you have a teenager around you, do a quick experiment: ask him/her who Rosa Park is. Then, ask who James Madison is. Or, Patrick Henry.
Then, depending on you personality, you can start laughing/weeping/cursing. (Being from Soviet Union originally, I did all three simultaneously).
Posted by: Ozornik at Nov 5, 2008 10:05:34 AM
I find the whole notion of outrage odd to begin with.
Aren't most college students pursuing degrees that are more aligned with right-brain thinking, which has been correlated with liberal inclination?
Posted by: meter at Nov 5, 2008 10:09:53 AM
>It's not that the professors make conservatives
>into liberals. The problem is that already
>moderately liberal students don't hear the
>counter-viewpoint and stay liberal.
Good point. The professors may simply delay the triumph of experience over hope. Yunguns are naturally liberal.
Posted by: holmegm at Nov 5, 2008 10:11:30 AM
I went into college as a political science major with fairly left leaning ideals. I was against privatization of social security, I thought socialized health care was a basic human right and was therefore a good idea, I thought welfare was a good idea because it kept poor people from resorting to crime...I thought many things that I no longer believe.
I came out of college having developed a great interest economics and graduated with a BS in polisci and economics and a minor in math. Over this time, I discovered the works of Smith, Ricardo, Bastiat, Mises, Hayek...etc and had a personal ideological revolution.
I became much more fiscally conservative, less socially liberal but more progressive and changed my belief of the roll of the government. Though I still consider myself an independent, I most closely identify myself with libertarian values.
So I would say (though not my personal experience) that a person's family has much more of an influence on someone being liberal than college. And once exposed to many of the works even basic gen eds expose students to, I would say a fair amount become more conservative in their ideological beliefs.
Posted by: Bryan at Nov 5, 2008 10:17:35 AM
even if the indoctrination doesn't work, it gives students a false sense of consensus and/or a belief that all smart people have lefty views (cause the smartest people are professors, right?). i can tally up the number of outright silly beliefs my ivy league college professors tried, implicitly or explicitly, to instill in their students, it's impressive, and impressively wrong. but, as i think someone noted, there's a huge divide here between "liberal" arts, which most professors seem to view as politics in disguise, and other fields where there are objective metrics against which to test theories/beliefs.
Posted by: dj superflat at Nov 5, 2008 10:47:04 AM
I think the outrage is a bit misplaced too, but I don't have to be a mindreader to understand getting upset at my tax money being used to propagandize others with views opposite to my own, if I were a conservative.
They say that there is a definite shift towards liberalism, not that liberals select liberal-oriented majors, which I'm sure they do, but that doesn't explain the shift.
Steve,
I'm not sure what you think I said, but I didn't.
So, here's something you can really snipe at. From the reporting, the papers seem to prove that professors don't often turn solid Ayn Rand readers into Naomi Klein followers, or at least aren't the main factor. I don't have to discount the research to critique it as far as it goes, which isn't far. The marginal effect has been pointed out and there is plenty more critique. It's hard to prove an insignificant effect, especially when poorly selecting factors.
So, now I have to write bad sociology papers in order to critique their methodology? As if Cato or AEI sponsored such research that wouldn't be the first critique. They might even do it if they knew any university researchers. I was going to be polite about Brookings.
Posted by: Andrew at Nov 5, 2008 10:52:08 AM
I thought the concern of the article was likely more telling of the real complaint: the article suggests that real grounds for concern is that conservative subjects are not being taught.
It isn't a far leap to suggest that this might discourage conservative leaning students from continuing on in academia where such views would be refined or that over the long-term this would impact the quality of our political debate.
It is interesting that conservative views have recently been seen as anti-academic or hostile to knowledge - perhaps because people holding these views don't have as many speakers who have focused their careers on expressing them eruditely by years in academia?
Posted by: yakov_a at Nov 5, 2008 10:53:34 AM
I was a literature major in college and I felt like I was some kind of marxist seminary at times. People who enter the humanities may lean slightly to the left when they start, but it's difficult for me to believe that they don't move much further left by their senior year because of the curriculum and their professors. At the same time, it's going to be hard to disentangle the selection effects from any causal effects. Maybe you could use freshman composition courses to help identify a causal effects. Everyone has to take English 101 and the assignment of the lecturer/professor/grad student is largely random. That might actually let you test whether teacher political beliefs influence student political beliefs in the humanities.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Nov 5, 2008 10:58:35 AM
Seems like a lot of commenting without a lot of article-reading here...
I think the truth bubbles up - conservatives whose beliefs or evidence can't rise above the white noise of the status quo might be tragic losses, or they might not have made much difference anyway. Science was once the "liberal" viewpoint having to fight through the conservative belief system, and in the end it was a truth that could no longer be suppressed. I'm sure we'd all like the rest of the world to agree with us, but that would leave little room for the truly brave to display their courage. If your argument is just that real academia doesn't match ideal academia, that's boring.
As for myself, I'm not brave. But I don't blame the world for not being the way I want it to be. Academia is a market, and it's satisfying some consumer demand. If the demand for an alternative is as strong as this message board implies, then either someone is meeting it elsewhere - or you've got a business opportunity there.
Posted by: Joel at Nov 5, 2008 11:34:30 AM
I really don't get this obsession with the supposedly liberal academia. As an undergrad at a liberal arts school, more than a few of my classes required us to read Capitalism and Freedom and Wealth of Nations, as well as a bit of Hayek. And the professor in every case refused to find fault in the authors' work. When I brought up that Smith's LToV was a ridiculous basis for a theory of economics, I was smacked down by the Prof. When I mentioned that Friedman was begging the question in one of his arguments, I was ignored. "Liberal" professors my a**!
Posted by: brian at Nov 5, 2008 11:38:25 AM
