I keep hearing about the liberal bias in education. The folks who comment in this way tend to be making the case that this is a bad thing. I certainly have a liberal orientation and I certainly spent my career as an educator. My personal observations would also agree that the majority of educators have a liberal perspective. I decided to do a little research to determine if vocation and political perspective are linked.
As I expected, this is a well researched topic. If you are interested in this question, I would direct you to content prepared by Verdant Labs. The data are based on the public record of political contributions made by individuals reporting a given vocation (different look at the data). I always recommend that when using data one consider the methodology responsible for the data. In this case, liberal/conservative orientation was operationalized by identifying campaign contributions. You may agree or disagree with this method. There are some vocations with a strong political bias. Farmers, accountants, Catholic priests, and car salesmen are strongly conservative. Union organizers, psychiatrists. and environmental scientists are strongly liberal. Yes, educators also tend to be liberal.
Whatever your thought on the consequences of these biases and without really establishing there are consequences, it is interesting to try to figure out how these differences in perspective come about.
Some have attempted to address this question (this link is focused solely on higher education).
Perhaps higher education is inhospitable to those with conservative political values. Data appear to indicate this is not the case.
Looking at survey data from all of higher education’s primary constituencies, I began to realize that Republicans and conservatives, while vastly outnumbered in academia, were, for the most part, successful, happy, and prosperous. Fewer than 2 percent of faculty (Republican or Democratic) reported being the victims of unfair treatment based on their politics. Only 7 percent of Republican faculty believed that discrimination against those with “right-wing” views was a serious problem on their campus, compared with 8 percent of Democratic faculty who expressed concerns about discrimination against those with “left-wing” views. Asked to consider what they would do if given the opportunity to “begin your career again,” 91 percent of Democratic faculty and 93 percent of Republican faculty answered that they would “definitely” or “probably” want to be a college professor. Similarly, few rightleaning students or administrators claimed to have been the victims of political mistreatment. Like their Democratic counterparts, most were satisfied with their experience in higher education.
As an ex-higher education administrator, I can assure you that political orientation is not supposed to be discussed in the hiring process. Many specific topics are off limits when it comes to interviews. For example, woe unto you if you should ask if a candidate has children.
BTW – the source I cite above also offers data on shifts in attitudes by students taking courses taught by liberal or conservative perspectives. The data indicate no consistent pattern in individual changes.
The study concludes that concludes that students come to college with different attitudes.
Students may select courses based on these attitudes.
Whereas liberal and conservative students express similar levels of satisfaction with their college education, right-leaning students show greater dissatisfaction with their social science and humanities courses. Predictably, they gravitate away from majors in these fields and toward the more professionally oriented disciplines. While the underlying preferences of conservative students for “practical” fields contribute to their selection of majors, the extent to which the politics of the professoriate also influence these decisions is a question worthy of serious scholarly attention.
This type of interpretation may confuse some. It asserts that students select courses based on preferences, but leaves open the possibility that focus of the courses avoided might be biased. I am not exactly certain I understand what this means or that I am bothered by what I think this might mean. If a sociology course examines inequity in society this focus may make some feel uncomfortable, but should the focus of the course be changed if the content is true to objective data?
I have learned some things in my investigation, but I am not certain I know why there are predictable differences across professions. Is it fair to conclude that individuals pursue careers based on a combination of opportunity, aptitude, and valuing the experience and goals of particular occupations? If courses do not interest students, they tend to avoid these courses and if this is a general reaction the entire process of higher education. If courses make students feel uncomfortable, they tend to avoid these courses. If courses are too difficult, students tend to avoid these courses.
More importantly, perhaps we should be examining this entire issue from a very different perspective. Is higher education too accommodating by allowing such a high level of avoidance?