By Gracy Olmstead
Tuesday, July 11, 2017
While 55 percent of the electorate still believe colleges
and universities are having a positive impact on our country, a majority of
Republicans (58 percent) now believe the opposite, according to a new poll from
the Pew Research Center. Their findings—pulled from polling conducted among
2,504 adults—suggest a considerable chasm in the perceptions of higher
education between Republicans and Democrats. More than 70 percent of Democrats
and Democrat-leaning independents reported a favorable view of America’s
colleges and universities.
These findings on Republican opinion are remarkable in
part because of the dramatic shift they reflect: just two years ago, most GOP
voters (54 percent) believed that higher education was having a positive impact
on our country. Only 37 percent rated the country’s educational institutions
negatively. Last year, those numbers shifted to a 43 percent positive rating
and 45 percent negative rating, respectively.
That quick collapse in Republican trust is causing a lot
of people to look twice at this poll. Why have attitudes shifted so much?
Controversial
Approaches To Speech Have Grown
The simple answer to this question could stem from recent
events at universities like Middlebury College or the Naval Academy. Student
(and staff) protestors have, in many of these instances, refused to listen to
speakers they disagree with—sometimes turning violent in the process. In some
of these examples, professors have lost their jobs (or been mistreated in some
fashion) for touting unpopular ideas.
Conservative-leaning voters don’t just get angry at these
events because they like Charles Murray or Jim Webb—they may not be familiar
with their work or political opinions. Rather, they’re frustrated with a campus
culture that quashes free speech, open discussion, and public discourse. They’re
impatient with the intolerant tolerance that demands only specific ideas or
thoughts be expressed openly, and all others be rejected.
What’s more, they sense a growing liberal bias that
complements the progressive to the detriment or complete exclusion of the
conservative. Take this
Butler University class on “Trumpism and U.S. Democracy,” which one might
assume to include readings from classic democratic thinkers like Alexis De
Tocqueville, sociological and political studies by the likes of Christopher
Lasch, or commentary from modern writers like J.D. Vance. Instead, Professor
Ann Savage’s original course description promised to offer students an
opportunity to “discuss, and possibly engage in, strategies for resistance” to
Trump’s “sexism, white supremacy, xenophobia, nativism, and imperialism.” Many
parents were in uproar over the political reactions such a course would
promote. “We don’t pay you THOUSANDS of dollars to teach our children to act
out when things don’t go their way,” one mom posted on the Butler Facebook
page.
Campus PC Culture
Concerns Many Conservatives
Vitriolic reactions to unpopular ideas or speech—as well
as the inherent bias in courses like the above—aren’t the only things getting
Republicans riled up about higher education, however. The debate over “safe
spaces,” “trigger warnings,” and “political correctness” has risen to a head
over the past couple years, as professors (and students) seek to cater to the
wishes of their classroom—sometimes to the detriment of real learning, or even
real belonging. William Deresiewicz documents some of the tangible results of
such a culture over
at The American Scholar, drawn
from his experience teaching a course at a women’s college in California:
I had one student, from a
Chinese-American family, who informed me that the first thing she learned when
she got to college was to keep quiet about her Christian faith and her
non-feminist views about marriage. I had another student, a self-described
‘strong feminist,’ who told me that she tends to keep quiet about everything,
because she never knows when she might say something that you’re not supposed
to. I had a third student, a junior, who wrote about a friend whom she had
known since the beginning of college and who, she’d just discovered, went to
church every Sunday. My student hadn’t even been aware that her friend was
religious. When she asked her why she had concealed this essential fact about
herself, her friend replied, ‘Because I don’t feel comfortable being out as a
religious person here.’
I also heard that the director of
the writing center, a specialist in disability studies, was informing people
that they couldn’t use expressions like ‘that’s a crazy idea’ because they
stigmatize the mentally ill. I heard a young woman tell me that she had been
criticized by a fellow student for wearing moccasins—an act, she was informed,
of cultural appropriation. I heard an adjunct instructor describe how a routine
pedagogical conflict over something he had said in class had turned, when the
student in question claimed to have felt ‘triggered,’ into, in his words, a
bureaucratic ‘dumpster fire.’ He was careful now, he added, to avoid saying
anything, or teaching anything, that might conceivably lead to trouble.
I listened to students—young women,
again, who considered themselves strong feminists—talk about how they were
afraid to speak freely among their peers, and how despite its notoriety as a
platform for cyberbullying, they were grateful for YikYak, the social media
app, because it allowed them to say anonymously what they couldn’t say in their
own name. Above all, I heard my students tell me that while they generally
identified with the sentiments and norms that travel under the name of
political correctness, they thought that it had simply gone too far—way too
far. Everybody felt oppressed, as they put it, by the ‘PC police’—everybody,
that is, except for those whom everybody else regarded as members of the PC
police.
“So this is how I’ve come to understand the situation,”
Deresiewicz writes in conclusion. “Selective private colleges have become
religious schools. The religion in question is not Methodism or Catholicism but
an extreme version of the belief system of the liberal elite: the liberal
professional, managerial, and creative classes, which provide a large majority
of students enrolled at such places and an even larger majority of faculty and
administrators who work at them. To attend those institutions is to be
socialized, and not infrequently, indoctrinated into that religion.”
This has deeply influenced Republican perception of
higher education—and will continue to do so, as long as these trends continue
unchecked. Many conservatives want their youth to be challenged, stretched, and
nurtured intellectually. They don’t want them to be attacked for their
principles, or submerged in a culture that only allows one mode of thought or
politics.
Anti-Elitism
Suggests a Republican Distrust Of Higher Ed
It’s also true that current Republican attitudes toward
higher education could be influenced by the widespread populism (and,
correspondingly, anti-elitism) of the moment. Donald Trump’s election suggested
a dissatisfaction with the actions and processes of the insiders and expert
class, the coastal elites who—at least per widespread public perception—“run
the show.” Trump campaigned on promises to “drain the swamp,” assuring voters
that his business acumen would offer them something different, something more
approachable and tied to their wellbeing than the actions and policies of the
intellectual elites.
Of course, not all Republicans believed Trump’s promises.
Many were (and are) dissatisfied with the results of the 2016 presidential
election. But even among those who dislike Trump, I’ve seen a widespread
defensiveness of the small-town voter and blue-collar worker amongst GOP voters
after November 2016. Many of these voters dislike the snobbish disdain they
often sense from progressive (and even conservative) elites towards the common
folk.
For some, this resentment has built into an anti-intellectualism
that can reveal itself in a corresponding wariness of higher education. Many of
these people have experienced a dependability, loyalty, and experiential common
sense amongst the uneducated—the self-taught, the entrepreneurial, the hard-working
blue-collar class—that they haven’t experienced amongst the nation’s elites.
Student Loan Debt
Suggests Colleges Have Fallen Short
All of this affects widespread perceptions of higher
education. But it also must be noted that, on a more practical and less
ideological level, a lot of Republicans can find cause to criticize America’s
colleges and universities. Many of them have saddled young people with
staggering student loans, without offering them a secure future or source of
income. There are college-educated individuals working at Starbucks or the
local grocery store, hardly able to make rent payments, let alone pay off their
college debt.
What’s more, many students may be able to engage in some
sort of thoughtful discourse about literature or the arts, but are unable to
pay their bills on time or make meals from scratch. College taught them to be
cerebral, but it didn’t teach them “adulting”: the basic skills they need for
survival. Millennials have increasingly used this word (to the detriment of their
image in public perception) to describe the most basic of real-world
activities—such as working a 9 to 5 job, doing laundry, and buying vegetables.
In this sense, the cost-benefit analysis of college falls
very short in the opinion of many conservatives, some of whom likely have
recently hired or worked with recent college grads. Colleges and universities
have fallen far short of providing their students with two basic things: first,
the skills they need to succeed in the world at large, and second, the
financial independence they need to survive in a troubled economy.
It Doesn’t Have To
Be This Way
There are a lot of reasons to feel displeasure with the
state of American academia. But I don’t think that necessitates deserting the
academic institutions that can bring essential goods to Americans, young and
old. We needn’t desert classical liberal arts degrees for practical vocational
education (although a shift towards more skills-oriented offerings would
probably be good for a lot of Americans).
We need to understand the implications of an academic
system that’s broken in many ways. And we should try to fix its problems: by
determining ways to lessen the burden of student loans (without necessarily
offering free college), and by equipping students to navigate the difficulties
of adulthood—not just by helping them cultivate practical life skills, but also
by helping them confront and engage with difficult (even controversial) ideas
and concepts. Students must learn to confront the “other” in a way that’s
thoughtful, engaging, and empathetic.
Without that ability, college students will find higher
education hampers their future success more than it helps them. And Republicans
will likely continue to rate their country’s educational system poorly in years
to come.
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