Stephen Bainbridge notes the following from the UCLA student newspaper:
Nearly one-third of the students attending some of the nation’s top colleges and universities, including UCLA, reported that they had to agree with the political views of some professors in order to get a good grade, and 46 percent believed that some professors use the classroom to present their personal political views.
On the one hand, there is no doubt that there are professors who at least partially grade through such a filter that therefore their students feel like they must conform in their answers.
However, while I agree with Prof. Bainbridge that there is a clear bias in the professoriate, this kind of student-perception is often quite skewed. Students often blame their poor grades on their professor. I once had a student e-mail on Christmas Day (yes, Christmas) that I was the worst professor she had ever had and that clearly I graded based on my opinions and that students had to agree with me. Now, setting aside the fact that it was a comparative government class and there wasn’t even a very good opportunity for ideologically-based grading given the assignments, the bottom line was that she wasn’t a very good student and the papers she turned in were poorly researched and poorly written.
And from reading student evals for years, and the fact that students often scapegoat their own inadequate performances, I always discount these kinds of surveys.
However: I do not discount the fact that some profs impose their views on students.
Update: This post is Jammed! and that can mean ony one thing, and isn’t Lone Star (get the ref, score a geekpoint–and, wuite frankly, this is an easy one).
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I now know what to get you for Christmas.
Comment by John Lemon — Monday, December 13, 2024 @ 2:51 pm
Yeah, if you graded on opinions, Dr. Taylor, I would fail every single assignment from your class.
Comment by Joshua — Monday, December 13, 2024 @ 5:54 pm
In my current doctoral program, I know of only one professor who *may* be considered a conservative. However, I have made A’s in all the classes I’ve taken so far, despite having some heated discussions over supreme court opinions, media coverage of the war in iraq, and the presidential election.
What I’ve found is that you can write a paper about the topic without getting into *personal* opinions, with credible research that supports a position, and you’ll do fine.
Now, I can’t speak to all professors, but in my own classes, I don’t particularly care whether students agree with me or not (many are probably knee-jerk reflexively to the right of me). If you can’t write worth spit, your grade will reflect that.
Of course, someone is going to use this survey for their own purposes, but it is so inherently flawed as to be useless. Because what it’s asking about is perception. As you noted, there may be quite a bit of projection going on in these statements.
The question shouldn’t be “do you think professors graded you based on political bias,” but “DID professors grade on political bias?”
That would require a much more difficult research project, matching grades to students and surveying them on their political opinions, and then running stat analysis to see if there was a difference among grades based on political ideology that could not be explained by other factors (like being a horrible writer/researcher).
Comment by bryan — Monday, December 13, 2024 @ 6:50 pm
Bryan — you fail, for spitting in class.
Joshua — you fail too, just because.
Comment by John Lemon — Monday, December 13, 2024 @ 8:19 pm
Did OTB give you the Raspberry? Heh.
Try the sciences. If you din’t want to be a clone of your advisor, you get shunned. Forget political opinions. They want a real little mini-me.
Comment by caltechgirl — Monday, December 13, 2024 @ 10:17 pm
caltechgirl: you win the GeekPoint for this post!
Comment by Steven Taylor — Tuesday, December 14, 2024 @ 6:51 am
(1) Read, or see, THE HISTORY MAN by … (that darned Alzheimer’s again).
(2) My own impression is that blatant political bias by professors will be found, not among genuine liberals, but among hard-line Leftists. There IS a distinction, although many conservatives don’t seem to know the difference.(3) But I could be wrong, either way: sounds like a very interesting research topic for someone’s PhD. Get to it!
(4) Didn’t the University of California hire Angela Davis to teach philosophy? And give a PhD to Huey Newton?
(5) And on the other hand, how fair was the American academic system to qualified Marxists in the 50s? Didn’t you have to sign a loyalty oath to teach in many state university systems? And didn’t Stanford deny tenure to Paul Baran?
Comment by Douglas Hainline — Saturday, January 1, 2024 @ 4:58 pm