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Poll: 73 Percent of Republican Students Have Hidden Their Politics over Fears about Grades


Muda69

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https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/poll-73-percent-of-republican-students-have-hidden-their-politics-over-fears-about-grades/

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A recent survey of 1,000 Republican and Republican-leaning college students has found that 73 percent of them have hidden their political views in the classroom — because they’re worried that exposing them could negatively impact their grades.

College Pulse conducted the online poll at the end of August for a conservative campus-news source, The College Fix, which has previously reported on its findings. The survey polled conservative-leaning students only.

According to The Fix, the survey asked students: “Have you ever withheld your political views in class for fear that your grades would suffer?

Seventy-three percent of students who considered themselves to have “strong Republican” views said yes, as well as 71 percent with “weak Republican” views and 70 percent of Republican-leaning independents.

The huge percentage of conservative students responding in this way is disheartening — but it’s not shocking. In my years working for National Review, I’ve covered numerous examples of professors and faculty on college campuses who have chosen to make their hatred for conservatives known. For example, earlier this year, administrators at Middlebury College apologized to students who were upset that a conservative speaker had been invited to campus and pledged to do more to prevent conservative speakers in the future. In 2017, a Clemson University professor declared in a Facebook post that “all Republicans” are “racist” and “scum.” In 2015, a journalism instructor at Mississippi State University compared a conservative student group to the KKK. Back in 2014, a University of Michigan department chairwoman published an article titled “It’s Okay To Hate Republicans.”

First of all, let me be clear about the fact that I completely, totally support the First Amendment — and I absolutely understand that colleges’ professors and other employees do, and should, have the right to express their views. The thing is, though, they should really take more care to keep their comments to be more along the lines of policy discussions and avoid demonizing entire groups of people based solely on the fact that they’re on the opposite side of the political spectrum. Truly, I believe that our country would be a better place if everyone tried to maintain this kind of civility — but educators should especially want to adhere to it, for the sake of the students that they are tasked with teaching.

Now, it’s obvious how the Republican students would be helped by this kind of approach. If such huge numbers of them are really too uncomfortable to share their honest views in the classroom for fear of getting lower grades because of it, then they are not getting the kind of educational experience that they deserve. No student should feel uncomfortable in the classroom simply because he or she is a Republican. After all, college should be a place where people with all different kinds of views can feel free to express them — and have them challenged — so that they can learn and grow, and Republicans are missing out on that sort of valuable expression.

Which brings me to my second point: The status quo doesn’t just hurt Republican students, it hurts liberal students as well. Think about it: If Republicans are missing out on the valuable learning experience of having their views challenged because they do not feel that they can express them honestly, then liberal students are missing out on the same experience because they don’t have anyone challenging theirs. It’s true: Many college campuses are liberal echo-chambers, where liberal students and liberal professors are constantly reassuring each other of the correctness of the liberal position, without anyone ever exposing them to other points of view. This sort of environment will inevitably result in the liberal students who graduate from these colleges never having had the experience of defending their views or considering any others — which leaves them ill-prepared to engage politically in a real world that very much does include people who feel differently. In order to allow students to have the most educational college experience possible, these institutions should be encouraging its faculty and professors to demonstrate respect for people with different ideas.

Agreed.  Blind liberalism has taken over a great many college and university campuses.  And our educational system is poorer for it.

 

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2 hours ago, TrojanDad said:

My wife and I have repeatedly cautioned our youngest child (now at IU) to keep quiet both in the classroom and with peers regarding her political views.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-conservative-discrimination-20170507-story.html

 

If you can’t share your views without reprisal, your views are garbage.

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2 hours ago, TrojanDad said:

My wife and I have repeatedly cautioned our youngest child (now at IU) to keep quiet both in the classroom and with peers regarding her political views.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/oct/6/liberal-professors-outnumber-conservatives-12-1/

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-conservative-discrimination-20170507-story.html

 

If you can’t share your views without reprisal, your views are garbage.

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2 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

If you can’t share your views without reprisal, your views are garbage.

Exactly what kind of reprisal are you talking about Dante?  A "your views are stupid" or "your views are wrong, and here is why"?   Or maybe in the case of colleges & universities it is "I don't like your political views, you get an D in this class."

 

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1 minute ago, gonzoron said:

Totally agree. Fear mongering makes for snowflake offspring.

As the commentary states:

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Many college campuses are liberal echo-chambers, where liberal students and liberal professors are constantly reassuring each other of the correctness of the liberal position, without anyone ever exposing them to other points of view. This sort of environment will inevitably result in the liberal students who graduate from these colleges never having had the experience of defending their views or considering any others — which leaves them ill-prepared to engage politically in a real world that very much does include people who feel differently.

Snowflakes out in the real world.

Do any of us wish the GID OOB forum to become an echo-chamber?

 

 

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1 minute ago, Muda69 said:

Or maybe in the case of colleges & universities it is "I don't like your political views, you get an D in this class."

 

If you can actually document this, go to court over it, not the media.

Just now, Muda69 said:

Do any of us wish the GID OOB forum to become an echo-chamber?

It sort of is.

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2 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

If you can actually document this, go to court over it, not the media.

https://www.foxnews.com/story/student-says-school-persecuted-him-for-being-conservative\

http://redalertpolitics.com/2017/07/14/exclusive-unlv-professor-punished-gop-student-bad-grades-resigns/

3 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

It sort of is.

Please elaborate.

 

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2 minutes ago, DanteEstonia said:

It sort of is

True dat.

 

6 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

  Or maybe in the case of colleges & universities it is "I don't like your political views, you get an D in this class."

Is there documented proof of this happening? <-----------------------------------(not a rhetorical question, so there can be no faux confusion.)

Just now, Muda69 said:

Two cases? LOL.

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1 minute ago, gonzoron said:

True dat.

 

Is there documented proof of this happening? <-----------------------------------(not a rhetorical question, so there can be no faux confusion.)

Again:  

https://www.foxnews.com/story/student-says-school-persecuted-him-for-being-conservative\

http://redalertpolitics.com/2017/07/14/exclusive-unlv-professor-punished-gop-student-bad-grades-resigns/

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It is pathetic that students cannot express their opinions without fear of retaliation from their libtard professors. Libtards are weak, childish and hateful wimps. They are easily manipulated, gullible fools.

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4 hours ago, Howe said:

It is pathetic that students cannot express their opinions without fear of retaliation from their libtard professors. Libtards are weak, childish and hateful wimps. They are easily manipulated, gullible fools.

Poor little snowflakes.

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43 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

Was Greenberg a professor doling out bad grades?

 

43 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

Should open up the free market for private Right Wing Universities. I guess all the existing Conservative Universities must be full up. 

 

45 minutes ago, TrojanDad said:

Yeah.....poor little snowflake.....

Here's one now....

Image result for Charlottesville protest

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Ideological Discrimination in Academia Is More Complicated than You Think: https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/09/ideological-discrimination-colleges-universities-complicated/

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Many right-of-center students (especially those who are grade-obsessed) self-censor, fearing that their professors will punish them for their political and cultural views if they were to express them in class discussions or assignments.

It’s easy to understand why they are concerned. The dearth of ideological diversity in the professoriate is significant; in social-research fields, the left-to-right ratio is roughly 10:1. Professors rarely assign readings by conservative or libertarian intellectuals, let alone engage with such thinkers in a charitable way. Faculty regularly make off-topic jabs at Trump or the Republicans, or even end up digressing into full-on rants. Professors who are moderate and charitable in the classroom may post highly political content on social media (or occasionally write highly political opinion pieces or blog posts) expressing antipathy toward Republicans and conservatives. And all of this is amplified, and often distorted, by an outrage-driven media industry.

But do liberal faculty actually demonstrate bias in grading?

In a new study, three scholars examined the backgrounds, affiliations, and institutional perceptions of more than 7,200 undergraduate students at colleges nationwide and found that liberal students do tend to have closer relationships with faculty than do conservative students. Moreover, there was a gap between the grades of liberal students and conservative students, and the difference persisted even after controlling for things such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, and SAT scores, but the gap was very small: less than one-tenth of a point on a 4-point scale (e.g., less than the difference between a 3.0 and 3.1 GPA). That is, professors may be slightly biased in grading, but not so much that it is likely to change someone’s final letter grade for a course.

This finding may surprise some, because there is compelling evidence that professors and administrators do engage in ideological discrimination with respect to peer review, institutional review boards, admissions to Ph.D. programs, and faculty hiring and promotion. So what’s up with grading? Is the issue that we just haven’t been measuring grading bias well enough? Perhaps accusations of bias are overblown across the board? Is there even reason to suspect that faculty are less likely to ideologically discriminate against undergraduates than against other groups?

It’s likely the latter. Let me explain.

The first thing people should understand is that most instructors do not enjoy grading — and we really hate haggling with students about the grades we assign (let alone with the parents or administrators they often drag into disputes). Nor do we want to get docked on our teaching evaluations by kids who turned in mediocre work but are mad they got a C.

Instructors also understand that the vast majority of students are just passing through higher-ed institutions on their way to something else. Undergraduates overwhelmingly identify getting a better job and earning more money as their primary reasons for attending college. Most students who obtain a bachelor’s degree stop there; just over a third of those who complete a B.A. go on to get an advanced degree. Even most who complete graduate or professional degrees (especially M.A.s, J.D.s, and M.D.s) leave the academy thereafter.

...

The first bit of good news is that undergraduates are probably not being penalized much (or at all) by their professors for holding or expressing views that diverge from those of their professors.6

The bad news is that if these students did decide to pursue a degree after their bachelor’s, they likely would face more discrimination in admissions, on the job market, in tenure committees, and when submitting research for IRB approval or peer review.  The self-censoring may never end: Many faculty conceal their conservative or religious leanings — and avoid work on controversial topics — in order to preserve good relations with their left-leaning colleagues, avoid being targeted by student activists, and otherwise protect their professional standing.  This is unfortunate, not least because their students and colleagues could benefit from exposure to different perspectives and ideas.

However, the final bit of good news is that, despite challenges, those conservatives who do stick with academia all the way to a professorship generally feel good about their career decisions and tend to enjoy their work about as much as their left-leaning peers do. So, rather than being discouraged and perhaps exiting the academy for think tanks, conservative and religious scholars should commit themselves to being part of the solution, to staying in the system, and to playing a constructive role in reforming institutions of higher learning.  We’ll all be better off for it.

 

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