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I would not label college as a "liberal haven" myself. Sure some departments may have more liberal reputations than others, but one would think it's really a question of which departments in a college, once a particular college is considered.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Katarina Witt
A lot of college profs are really not all that into politics that much, except as how they are affected. For ex, at a state university, the profs will mostly be in favor of increased state monies going to the U. Certain fields have a more liberal/conservative bias, e.g. engineering is conservative, social work is liberal, etc, but there are exceptions to all of this and also degrees of liberalism/conservatism among individuals in these areas.
And even the bias of the field depends on the university... as well as the region in which said university is in. It often seems as though graduate students (as far as STEM disciplines are concerned) are more liberal than undergraduates in the same disciplines. I always thought business to be more conservative than engineering.
I may not know that much about Georgia State other than the liberal radicals (by Deep South standards) are actually slotted within hard science departments, more than social sciences or humanities; what little I know about that particular school is second-hand knowledge from a student that did her undergrad there before moving to Montreal for graduate school (no, she didn't end up attending McGill; FWIW McGill is more conservative than my undergrad is).
My undergrad is a little peculiar in that computer science actually has a reputation to be a nest of liberal radicals (and would probably put the CS departments at Berkeley, Columbia, CU-Boulder, Minnesota to shame in this respect) but otherwise business is more conservative than engineering, which is more conservative than hard sciences (physics is more liberal than biology, mathematics or chemistry) who, in turn, are more conservative than humanities or social sciences.
Depends on your point of view. If you're already of a liberal mind then the culture on campus seems perfectly normal. If you're conservative, universities are a liberal haven. People who are active in the Christianity faith, members of the ROTC, former active duty military, and or are politically conservative know full well today's universities are a hotbed of liberal mindset and anything they don't agree with isn't allowed. One university had students in a tizzy because someone wrote in side walk chalk Trump 2016. Displays of "All Lives Matter" and "Blue Lives Matter" were not only taken down, they were destroyed by students who replaced the display with "black lives matter" displays. Sad that on American universities muslim students have less fear on campus than Christian students.
I've always found the "college is for liberals" argument spread mostly by people who don't feel as though they could make it in college. In other words, they're jealous and trying to bring you down instead of bringing themselves up.
The only classes I took in college (UGA, fairly liberal) that could even end itself to politics were my humanities classes. Of those classes, only 2 professors made their liberal views known.
College can easily be training for a professional job if you want it to be. In that case, you'll be focused on actual work. My computational theory education didn't lend itself to political discussions. My economic theory classes didn't either (it could if you chose the more liberal arts one now that I think about it, but I stuck with econometric, game theory, industrial and the like - very math and graph heavy, very little time to think about politics).
a prime example of repeating something over and over again so often that people who don't look for the facts behind the words think that it's true. Something the right has become very good at.
The left has also been very good at that - the "global warming" nonsense is a prime example.
I've never had professors tell me who to vote for. Some of them did make their political views known but they never told people to believe what they did. When people go to college they get exposed to people of different ethnicities, religions, income levels etc. The class material can also be out of someone's comfort zone. For some this is extremely challenging as it is something they had never experienced before. I noticed it mostly in students from very religious and conservative backgrounds. I took a class about experimental literature and read a very erotic story from a gay man's perspective. This girl in the class was freaking out because she went to a Christian high school and felt like she was being persecuted by the professor by having to read a book like that. The thing is no one is forced to enroll in classes they don't think they feel comfortable taking. I have no sympathy for these types of students. You're exposed to new and conflicting information that changes what you thought you knew. That's the point of education to be able think critically and analyze. There is a hive mind sometimes though. This election season college students are coming out in droves for Bernie Sanders but I don't think it has anything to do with their professors and has everything to do with their environment where all their peers are doing the same thing.
I've always found the "college is for liberals" argument spread mostly by people who don't feel as though they could make it in college. In other words, they're jealous and trying to bring you down instead of bringing themselves up.
I've always found the "college is for liberals" argument spread mostly by people who don't feel as though they could make it in college. In other words, they're jealous and trying to bring you down instead of bringing themselves up.
That's BS. I made it through college, as a sociology major. I still don't agree with the liberal slant I got with my major.
I've always found the "college is for liberals" argument spread mostly by people who don't feel as though they could make it in college. In other words, they're jealous and trying to bring you down instead of bringing themselves up.
It can't be just that as you'll hear people with degrees (and often the people creating the argument for others to repeat) make it as well.
IME there are three reasons for that:
1) It serves as another basis for attacking government funding of higher education (state and federal)
2) It targets particular programs that the right fundamentally does not agree with ("_____ studies")
3) It reduces the authority/knowledge of experts on the left
That said, it is fair to say that colleges need to be watchful that they aren't just reproducing certain patterns of thought. But setting the table such that colleges are just liberal havens makes it easier to make an argument that they are not, alternatively: places of higher knowledge, lynchpins of our economy/society, etc.
It's easier to convince people we should cut funding if these places are useless (indeed, harmful!) vs. useful.
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