For years, many conservatives have warned that America’s colleges and universities are becoming bastions for far-left professors to indoctrinate the country’s youth with liberal ideologies. Sadly, a new survey seems to show how right this assumption is.
In a recent poll conducted by College Pulse for The College Fix, an overwhelming majority of the 1,000 Republican and Republican-leaning college students surveyed said they hide political views because they’re worried about professors lowering their grades.
College Pulse is an online analytics and survey company that focuses on college students. Only those who consider themselves Republican or Republican-leaning were polled. These individuals were asked “Have you ever withheld your political views in class for fear that your grades would suffer?” An astounding 73 percent of students who identify as “strong Republican” answered in the affirmative. Seventy-one percent of those who consider themselves a “weak Republican” also said yes. Amazingly, even 70 percent of individuals who identify as Republican-leaning independents answered that they had kept their political views secret in order to protect their grades.
The College Fix noted that “Most surveys over the years have found that academia is dominated by professors who identify as liberal or who are registered Democrats.” In this environment, conservative students are worried that engaging in political disagreements with their professors might harm their grade-point averages, GPAs. The survey consisted of a comments section where students could weigh in about the topic. Unsurprisingly, several of the students’ remarks were particularly disturbing.
A Western Kentucky University student revealed, “I wrote a 19 page research paper on a Christian pro-life movement. I was the only one in the class that, when presenting my paper, had a ‘surprise visitor’ (who was the teacher’s very liberal friend) argue [with] me about their views. …”
A Notre Dame responder stated, “I actually got yelled at by a professor for my views on gun control. It wasn’t an argument or anything, just plain one-sided insulting.”
A Clemson pupil shared, “When writing papers for gen ed classes? Absolutely. I know a guy who chose to write a pro-border wall argumentative essay for our super liberal professor and the prof just wrote ‘this whole paper is one big fallacy’ and bombed him. Me? I wrote about the evils of horse racing. Perfectly safe topic.”
Intriguingly, a University of California San Diego, UCSD, student offered, “Not for fear of a bad grade. But fear of being a social outcast.” Someone from Auburn admitted that their grades had been affected when they decided to not withhold their views.
A pupil from the University of Louisville remarked, “I am conservative. I would be crucified. I heard enough horror stories from friends and family to keep my mouth shut and avoid politics in class if at all possible.”
A Kansas State student revealed, “Professor the day after the presidential election kicked two students wearing MAGA hats out of class. I was appalled. We’re all people, if someone disagrees with you — love them anyways.”
One of the more unsettling comments was made by an Arizona State student. The individual said, “In my sociology class, my professor asked us if we would give our child hormone blockers if they believed they were transgender (that was the day’s lesson). One guy said he would rather teach his daughter to love her body the way it is than change it. She [sat] straight up said ‘so you would be a bad parent then? What was your name again?’ Then she went to type something on her computer. Not a good day for him, I’m sure.”
So, regardless of what college students think, does liberal professor bias actually affect student grades? According to a working paper published earlier this year from the University of Arkansas, the answer might be a resounding yes. The paper’s authors asserted that conservative students start college having earned both higher GPAs and SAT scores than their liberal counterparts in high school. However, by the fourth year of higher education, they have lower GPAs than liberal students. The authors argued this discrepancy might occur due to institutional bias.
What happened to college students being provided with differing views of political discourse and learning to make up their own minds about the issues? Apparently, this archaic way of instruction had to be cleared out to pave the way for safe spaces and other liberal educational nonsense.
