You think profs lean to the left? You're right

It is often said that college students tend to be overwhelmingly liberal - and it seems this is true of college professors as well.

A recent study conducted by Penn State University professor Matthew Woessner and Elizabethtown College professor April Kelly-Woessner found that people who identify themselves as conservatives are simply less likely to pursue a doctorate. As a result, fewer conservatives become professors.

In the study, conservatives tended to choose a major in a professional field, like business or communications. Students in these majors generally expressed a lower level of interest in pursuing a doctorate.

Also, when asked to rank the importance of certain life goals, liberals and conservatives differed sharply. Compared to the liberals surveyed, conservatives were much more likely to choose financial security and having a family as most important, rather than making a theoretical contribution to science or authoring an original work.

These factors all contribute, the study argues, to a lower interest among conservatives in pursuing doctorates and becoming professors.

Penn Political Science professor Rogers Smith said he has noticed many of these trends here at Penn, saying conservative students "do tend not to think of academic careers, even though they are very capable of them."

Smith cited Wharton and the University's pre-professional atmosphere as major reasons that many conservatives choose to pursue careers outside of academia.

Woessner acknowledged that the survey is not a conclusive answer to the issue of liberals and conservatives in higher education.

"This is not the definitive answer; it is the first best guess about what derives the differences between liberals and conservatives," he said. "There's still a lot we don't know."

Regardless of this uncertainty, Woessner said the study's findings illustrate the importance of intellectual diversity within colleges. Having professors from both ends of the political spectrum, Woessner said, helps students think critically about important issues.

"Just as one could make the case for having different races, genders and economic backgrounds, there's probably nothing more important than having different ideological backgrounds when teaching, especially teaching politics," he said.

While the trends illustrated by the study seem to have some validity at Penn, administrators do not think this has an effect on the student experience.

"We do not seek or take into account in hiring, information about political attitudes or opinions," Associate Provost Vincent Price wrote in an e-mail.

Penn President Amy Gutmann expressed confidence in faculty members' abilities to keep their political views out of the classroom.

"The most important thing to recognize is that it is the responsibility of faculty to teach their subject, not to teach their political leanings or biases," she said. "We have a faculty who have lived up to that responsibility."

Comments (12)

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As the late William F. Buckley once said, I'd rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston phone book than 2,000 faculty members at Harvard University.

Actually, the research that was done shows that students who are inclined toward the right tend to be uninterested in the kinds of questions and the nature of the work--as well as the income--of professors. Students, as here at Wharton, choose typically not to be professors because they want to make money rather than spend their days in a library or lab, alternating with what one Wharton student told me was essentially "babysitting, only with health care and social security" (ie, teaching). Follow the money.

Maybe Wharton students get jobs because there's this thing called "job experience" that seems to help a lot when you're teaching a business class. Plus I'm sure that the professors here at Penn are paid more than most students out of Penn will make in their chosen professions. Nice try though.

I'm a conservative Ph.D. student. In my mind, being "openly Republican" is a bit of a career killer. While some people in my department do know of my orientation, I try not to be too loud about it. I've definitely encountered many people who object to my views, and have read studies that state that it is harder for conservatives to get jobs in academia. Based on my own experiences, I'm not surprised, as I've received some criticism for my beliefs.

I also experience that some of the more "liberal" professors have extremely negative views of religion and show no qualms about teaching these views to the class. I wonder if this study looked at religious beliefs at all.

A shame, isn't it, that all reflection, ethical exploration, and the exchange of ideas about the significance and impact of our actions, our time on earth, our relationship and obligations to each other and ourselves, is relegated to the "left," while meanwhile those on the "right" are licensed to be the greedy, the thoughtless, and the self-absorbed? There was a time when there were intellectuals on both sides of the divide, and when critical thinking was something all intelligent people engaged in, and considered in relation to history, philosophy, literature. Today, it's just the "left" (whatever that means) arguing with itself over mostly small potatoes, while meanwhile the "right" is systematically and obliviously destroying the world. And both sides are as righteous and idiotic and unchallenged--bereft of dialectic--as any could be.

Actually, as I learned from my left leaning professors, only discrimination can ever explain an under-representation of one group. It is time we instituted a quota system whereby an equal number of conservative and liberal professors and students must comprise the ideological breakdown of the University.

[QUOTE id="4624674c-d0c9-4e00-8367-e8de2c92bcc8"]A shame, isn't it, that all reflection, ethical exploration, and the exchange of ideas about the significance and impact of our actions, our time on earth, our relationship and obligations to each other and ourselves, is relegated to the "left," while meanwhile those on the "right" are licensed to be the greedy, the thoughtless, and the self-absorbed? There was a time when there were intellectuals on both sides of the divide, and when critical thinking was something all intelligent people engaged in, and considered in relation to history, philosophy, literature. Today, it's just the "left" (whatever that means) arguing with itself over mostly small potatoes, while meanwhile the "right" is systematically and obliviously destroying the world. And both sides are as righteous and idiotic and unchallenged--bereft of dialectic--as any could be.[/QUOTE] Well, many of us will fall on one side, left or right, or the other, that is not really a problem. I think what we are seeing in many colleges and universities is that in practically all departments, even no-political the tilt to the left is very pronounced. That does have an effect on how students are being taught and the ideas they are being exposed to.

This article is missing something... Sure, conservatives are less likely than liberals to want to be professors. And I'm sure that black students are less likely than white students to want to be professors, as are Hispanic students and Native American students. Why? -because they don't feel as comfortable in the academy. Why? - because there aren't many of them there to begin with. A conservative student is much more comfortable going into professional programs because there are more conservatives there. There's more to this trend than just personal preference. What about the climate we create? "Professors lean to the left" is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Andrew J. Rennekamp Ph.D. Candidate, Biomedical Graduate Studies University of Pennsylvania, School of Medicine andrewre@med.upenn.edu

Reality has a well-known liberal bias.

In related news: Michael Woessner finds English alphabet to consist of 26 letters, declares self "fucking genius" Yawn.

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