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Higher education in the United States is an optional stage of formal learning following secondary education. Higher education, also referred to as post-secondary education, third-stage, third-level, or tertiary education occurs most commonly at one of the 4,360 Title IV degree-granting institutions, either colleges or universities in the country. [1] These may be public universities, private universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or for-profit colleges. US higher education is loosely regulated by several third-party organizations.
Within this vast estate many issues arise for government, staff and students.
Research since the 1970s has consistently found that professors are more liberal and Democratic than the general population. [2] [3] [4]
A 2007 Zogby poll found that 58% of Americans thought that college professors' political bias was a "serious problem". This varied depending on the political views of those asked. 91% of "very conservative" adults agreed compared with 3% of liberals. [5]
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A nationwide study conducted every three years by the Higher Education Research Institute (HERI) of UCLA shows that from 1989 to 2014 professors identifying as liberal or far-left increasingly outnumbered those identifying as conservative or far-right. [7] [8] [9] The shift from 2014 to 2017 was less extreme than prior years, with numbers standing at approximately 60% liberal/far-left, 28% moderate, and 12% conservative/far-right. [7] According to an article published in Academe, the impact of having more liberal professors meant that fewer conservative students were likely to pursue advanced or doctoral degrees. [10] According to Stephen Hayward, the fewer conservative professors results in fewer conservative students being mentored and supported to seek graduate level education, creating a "self-reinforcing" cycle. [11]
In 2012, Tilburg University psychologists Yoel Inbar and Joris Lammers conducted anonymous random surveys of 800 members of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and found that 85% of respondents self-identified as liberal and 6% self-identified as conservative. Respondents that self-identified as either conservative or moderate were found to be significantly more reluctant to express their political views to their colleagues for fear of negative consequences, and were more likely to believe that their colleagues would actively discriminate against them on the basis of their political beliefs. [12]
In January 2015, a major literature review co-written by psychologists José L. Duarte, Jarret T. Crawford, Jonathan Haidt, Lee Jussim, Philip E. Tetlock and sociologist Charlotta Stern summarized numerous studies of how academic psychology has little ideological diversity, that the ratio of liberal-to-conservative or Democratic-to-Republican professors has dramatically increased since 1990, that the disparity is undermining the quality of research in psychology, and that the main causes of the lack of ideological diversity are self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. [13]
In September 2016, a replication and extension of the 2012 Inbar and Lammers study conducted by psychologists Nathan Honeycutt and Laura Freberg surveyed 618 faculty members of four California State University campuses and confirmed the previous finding of a hostile climate towards conservative professors in academic psychology departments, but also extended their study to 76 other academic departments spanning agricultural, business, education, arts and letters, engineering, and science colleges and found that there are sizable percentages of professors willing to discriminate against conservative academics in every academic department that they surveyed. [14]
Turning Point USA is a conservative youth group formed by Charlie Kirk in 2012. The organization has a presence on hundreds of US campuses. [15] [16] [17] In 2016, Turning Point USA began publishing its Professor Watchlist to expose faculty who they claim "discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom." [18] [19] [20] [21] Charlie Kirk, TPUSA's president, has criticized college campuses as "islands of totalitarianism" filled with liberal students and faculty members who force their worldview upon those around them. [22]
In December 2018, the University of California, Berkeley settled a free speech lawsuit filed by the Berkeley College Republicans and Young America's Foundation, accusing the university of discriminating against speakers with conservative views. Under the settlement, Berkeley will modify its procedures for handling "major events", which typically draw hundreds of people, and agreed not to charge "security" fees for a variety of activities, including lectures and speeches. It will also pay $70,000 to cover the legal costs of the plaintiffs. [23]
The Anti-Defamation League verified more than 300 incidents of white nationalist propaganda at more than 200 college and university campuses in 2018. [24]
On March 21, 2019, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to protect campus free speech. [25] According to President Trump, "Under the guise of speech codes, safe spaces and trigger warnings, these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity and shut down the voices of great young Americans..." [26] He added that "Taxpayer dollars should not subsidize anti–First Amendment institutions...." [27]
Middlesex University London is a public research university in Hendon, northwest London, England. The name of the university is taken from its location within the historic county boundaries of Middlesex.
Aberystwyth University is a public research university in Aberystwyth, Wales. Aberystwyth was a founding member institution of the former federal University of Wales. The university has over 8,000 students studying across three academic faculties and 17 departments.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), formerly named the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit civil liberties group founded in 1999 with the mission of protecting freedom of speech on college campuses in the United States. FIRE changed its name in June 2022, when it broadened its focus from colleges to freedom of speech throughout American society.
Liberty University (LU), known simply as Liberty, is a private evangelical Christian university in Lynchburg, Virginia. According to Liberty’s website, the school is non-denominational. It was previously aligned with the Southern Baptist Convention. Founded in 1971 by Jerry Falwell Sr. and Elmer L. Towns as Lynchburg Baptist College, Liberty is among the world's largest Christian universities and one of the largest private non-profit universities in the United States by total student enrollment.
The University of Dallas is a private Catholic university in Irving, Texas. Established in 1956, it is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
The University of Buckingham (UB) is a non-profit private university in Buckingham, England and the oldest of the country's six private universities. It was founded as the University College at Buckingham (UCB) in 1973, admitting its first students in 1976. It was granted university status by royal charter in 1983.
Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It has a curricular emphasis on government, economics, public affairs, finance, and international relations. CMC is a member of the Claremont Colleges consortium.
In the United States, higher education is an optional stage of formal learning following secondary education. It is also referred to as post-secondary education, third-stage, third-level, or tertiary education. It covers stages 5 to 8 on the International ISCED 2011 scale. It is delivered at 3,931 Title IV degree-granting institutions, known as colleges or universities. These may be public or private universities, research universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, or for-profit colleges. U.S. higher education is loosely regulated by the government and by several third-party organizations.
HSE University, officially the National Research University Higher School of Economics is a public research university founded in 1992 and headquartered in Moscow, Russia. Along with its main campus located in the capital, the university maintains three other regional campuses in Nizhny Novgorod, Perm and Saint Petersburg. There is also the Lyceum at HSE University in Moscow.
The James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, often called simply the James Madison Program or the Madison Program, is a scholarly institute within the Department of Politics at Princeton University espousing a dedication "to exploring enduring questions of American constitutional law and Western political thought." The Madison Program was founded in 2000 and is directed by Robert P. George, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University.
Yale-NUS College is a liberal arts college in Singapore. Established in 2011 as a collaboration between Yale University and the National University of Singapore, it is the first Liberal Arts college in Singapore and one of the first few in Asia. With an average acceptance rate of 5.2%, it is among the most selective institutions in the world. Yale-NUS was the first institution outside New Haven, Connecticut that Yale University had developed in its 300-year history, making Yale one of the first American Ivy League schools to establish a college bearing its name in Asia.
The Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) is a Canadian non-profit organization founded to promote academic freedom and intellectual excellence on Canadian institutions of higher education.
Academic bias is the bias or perceived bias of scholars allowing their beliefs to shape their research and the scientific community. It can refer to several types of scholastic prejudice, e.g., logocentrism, phonocentrism, ethnocentrism or the belief that some sciences and disciplines rank higher than others.
For-profit higher education in the United States refers to the commercialization and privatization of American higher education institutions. For-profit colleges have been the most recognizable for-profit institutions, and more recently with online program managers, but commercialization has been a part of US higher education for centuries. Privatization of public institutions has been increasing since at least the 1980s.
Turning Point USA (TPUSA) is an American nonprofit organization that advocates for conservative politics on high school, college, and university campuses. It was founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk and Bill Montgomery. TPUSA's affiliate groups include Turning Point Endowment, Turning Point Action and TPUSA Faith. TPUSA has been described as the fastest growing organization of campus chapters in America, and according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, is the dominant force in campus conservatism.
The political views of American academics began to receive attention in the 1930s, and investigation into faculty political views expanded rapidly after the rise of McCarthyism. Demographic surveys of faculty that began in the 1950s and continue to the present have found higher percentages of liberals than of conservatives, particularly among those who work in the humanities and social sciences. Researchers and pundits disagree about survey methodology and about the interpretations of the findings.
Campus Reform is an American conservative news website focused on higher education. It is operated by the Leadership Institute. It uses students as reporters. The news site is known for conservative journalism, where it reports incidents of liberal bias and restrictions on free speech on American college campuses. The online publication maintains running list of "victories"—ranging from college policy changes to firings—on a dry-erase board at the website's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters inside the Leadership Institute.
Professor Watchlist is a website, run by conservative advocacy organization Turning Point USA, that lists academic staff which Turning Point believes "discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom." It was launched in 2016 and had listed about 200 professors by December of that year. The website erroneously claimed that Hunter Biden would "assist in lecturing a course" at Tulane University in the fall semester of 2021.
Charles J. Kirk is an American right-wing political activist, radio talk show host, and internet personality who often espouses views rooted in conservatism. He founded Turning Point USA with Bill Montgomery in 2012, and has served as its executive director since. He is the CEO of Turning Point Action, Students for Trump, and Turning Point Academy, Turning Point Faith, president of Turning Point Endowment, and a member of the Council for National Policy. Kirk has written four books.
Heterodox Academy (HxA) is a non-profit advocacy group of academics working to counteract what they see as a lack of viewpoint diversity on college campuses, especially political diversity. The organization was founded in 2015 by Jonathan Haidt, Nicholas Quinn Rosenkranz, and Chris C. Martin.
Justice Department official Jesse Panuccio applauded the settlement in a statement on Monday, calling it a "win for protecting free speech on public college campuses."