Mitchell Langbert has some statistics of interest in the latest issue of Academic Questions. Homogenous: The Political Affiliations of Elite Liberal Arts College Faculty.
The picture which heads the post shows the ratio of registered Democrats to registered Republicans across a broad selection of liberal arts colleges. This was not a survey, but a check of faculty lists against voter registrations.
Not everybody registers, and not everybody is a D or R; Langbert estimates the holdouts and others at about a quarter or so.
As regular readers know, viewed from a Realist-Traditionalist perspective, the difference between Ds and Rs is slight—at best. Langbert’s statistics paint a brighter picture than actually exists.
As it is, excluding military colleges, there is something just shy of 13 to 1 Ds to Rs at liberal arts schools, a figure which averages across all departments.
Given almost no Ds hold a Realist-Traditionalist perspective, and that only a handful of Rs do, and that the fraction of RTs among the holdouts is likely small, the ratio of Progressives (a handy label) to RTs is probably two to ten times worse than the D to R ratio.
That would make the ratio of P(rogressives) to RTs anywhere from 26 to 130 to 1. A wild guess, admittedly.
If that latter figure seems high to you, just think how many articles from this site professors in an English department would agree with. Include even those professors who don’t mind ending sentences with prepositions. 130 to 1 starts to feel small.
There is huge variation between departments, and between schools.
At Bryn Mawr (where’s Ianto?), Langbert found no Rs at all. At Wellesley, the ratio is 136 to 1. That would make the odds of finding an RT at either of these ideology factories bugambo big. Which is no surprise whatsoever.
At the other end is Thomas Aquinas, where there are no Ds. But also only 26 professors.
West Point had 1.3 to 1 D to R, and Annapolis 2.3 to 1. Applying our multiplier, we have about 2.6 — 13 to 1 Ps to RTs in the Army, and 4.6 — 23 to 1 in the Navy. This is also expected, given headlines.
Engineering departments, i.e. those closest to Reality, had the lowest D/R ratio, 1.3 to 1. Even with the multiplier, it implies it’s still possible to get a reasonable RT-based education from an engineer.
This statistic can function as sort of a canary-in-a-coal mine. Once the ratio busts through the 10 to 1 barrier, students would be better off becoming plumbers than paying tens and tens of thousands a year to memorize disinformation.
That 10 to 1 is not entirely arbitrary. I base it on the plot above (and also at the link). Engineering, Chemistry, Economics, Professional, Mathematics, Physics, Computers, and Poli Sci all have ratios below 10 to 1 (D to R). The next one above is Psychology, at 16.8 to 1. Little needs to be said here about Psychology.
The worst department is “Interdisciplinary”, where Langbert found zero Rs. But that’s not a real field. The first real department is Communications, where again Langbert found no Rs. This is the most expected result of all of them. Communication is a sham field—Applied Propaganda is a more apt name—designed to give the dimmest students the “degree” they so badly need. This is why Communications is so popular; that, and it can so easily fulfill diversity quotas.
If you’re ready for another non-shocker, here it is: across the dataset non-males had about a 21 to 1 D/R ratio, and males only a 7.2 to 1 ratio. Three times higher! This was bound to happen when universities began preferentially hiring non-males because they were non-males.
The same kind of discrepancy was found between “Tier 1” versus “Tier 2″ schools, 21.5 to 1 versus 6.9 to 1. The Cathedral awards its own.
Langbert dryly summaries his findings: ” For policy, if political homogeneity is embedded in college culture, attempting to reform colleges by changing their cultures seems a very tall order. The solution to viewpoint homogeneity may lie in establishing new colleges from the ground up, rather than in reforming existing ones.”
Taller than Paul Bunyan after he’s been put on the rack for the crime of white supremacy.
There’s no “may lie” in it. Current colleges are doomed and beyond saving. Students should flee from them as fast as their wee legs can carry them. Building new ones can work, but it’s a hard road. Better are the kind of formal-informal networks of the kind we discussed before.
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Agree. I have 30+ grand kids and most are going into the trades including such things as plumbing, electrician, computer coding and a Wall Street start-up, etc. And in a large family networking for jobs is facilitated. The grand kids that did go to college went into specific job fields such as actuary, forensic accounting, nursing, etc. On the other hand most of my kids went to college most into career focused fields like Medicine, accounting, military career.
“formal-informal networks of the kind we discussed before”?
Not a satisfactory answer. Let’s get into it. What should the the new “universities” look like? What should be their purpose, style, functionality?
These are worthwhile questions. Let’s lay it out. Do some real thinking outside the proverbial box. $$$ is not a sufficient answer/hurdle. If WE do not design the schools of the future who will?
Any plan needs a framework outline basic picture: Goals, Resources, Functions, Reality Tests. Let’s start with the Goals. Do it. Make it your/our hobby (instead of doom and gloom). Great journeys begin with the first baby steps. Let’s go for it. I’ll help you. We all will.
Saw some guy interviewing college protesters, and they sounded like actors trying out for bit parts in “Idiocracy”. Did we decide one day to send our tards to college, or is college actively turning average kids into drooling imbeciles?
Dave – It is the purpose of modern university education to indoctrinate and enstupidate. Multiple studies have shown that college students know less when they graduate than when they enrolled. And most of what they do know is at odds with reality.
The destruction of the young is done with malice aforethought. Leftism is the denial of reality, so young people must be carefully taught to ignore reality.