Why Are There so Few Conservatives in Higher Education?
This is a question that needs to be addressed before real higher education reform can take place.
Steven F. Hayward writes at Minding the Campus.
Why So Few Conservatives in Higher Ed?
The social scientist Neil Gross made a splash last year with his book Why Are Professors Liberal, and Why Do Conservatives Care?, which, among other things, attempted to refute the claim that conservatives face ideological discrimination in academic hiring. There is some quantitative evidence (with more on the way soon) of ideological discrimination, which Gross grudgingly acknowledges, but he then goes to great lengths to argue that it is vastly overestimated.
He may be partly right, but not for the reasons his data-rich analysis lays out. Furthermore, Gross does not begin to reach the more important dimensions of the ideological shape of today’s humanities and social science departments that come into play before you even reach the fever swamps of race, class, and gender.
Liberals have pushed back against the charge of ideological discrimination in hiring with an entirely valid point: You guys don’t show up! There simply aren’t many conservative graduate students in the humanities and social sciences. If the top 200 universities set out to hire a conservative for each of their humanities departments, they’d run out after about 75; in some departments, they might run out of qualified conservative job candidates after about two.
And if you can’t find newly minted Ph.D.’s for tenure track jobs, you have to poach the thin ranks of conservatives already in academia somewhere, leading to no net increase in conservative presence in universities. But while liberals can’t be blamed wholly for this, they can be blamed for acquiescing in, when not actively causing, the degradation of the humanities and social sciences in ways make academic track jobs repellent to many intellectual conservatives. Understanding what has taken place requires a three-part analysis.
Read the rest at the link below.
Comments
First, libs like being surrounded with other libs. Second, many conservatives don’t like being around angry, name calling and opinionated libs. Third, conservatives can make more money and be around more nice people in the private sector. Fourth, the last thing a conservative wants to study is a useless faux science major.
It’s a sore temptation to make a flippant response, such as; conservatives are too busy at real jobs.
But, maybe that is the answer.