by Robin Landry

Created on: October 07, 2009

"Is professor bias a serious problem in public universities?" Since my eighteen-year-old son just started college this fall I found this debate question intriguing. But as I began to think about the question in depth I learned some important lessons about the concept of bias in general, including those that I, myself hold.

As an African-American female, when I read the word "bias" I have to admit that my mind immediately jumped to situations involving racial and gender bias. Are female students at a disadvantage in technical courses because male professors are biased toward men? Are African-Americans at risk of receiving lower grades from white professors in courses like English Composition where the evaluation of written work is often very subjective? This was the frame of reference from which I initially intended to address the question. So, when I did a quick Internet search of "professor bias" I was surprised to find a whole host of other types of concerns.

For example, the American Enterprise Institute conducted a study in 2002 where they reviewed the voter registration records for faculty members at nineteen universities across the United States and found that liberals outnumbered conservatives 10 to 1. The article surrounding the study seemed to suggest that this provided proof of bias against political conservatives with respect to hiring practices in academia. It is an interesting argument, but I found myself wondering if this conclusion was not also somewhat biased. Could it not also provide evidence that political conservatives simply don't pursue careers in academia as frequently as liberals do? Or perhaps, that individuals working in academic settings become more liberal over time? Or is there perhaps some still unexplored reason for the disparity?

Or consider a 2007 article from The Christian Reporter which asserts that "most" Americans view political bias of college professors as a problem. The article appears to be based on a poll conducted by Zogby International, a marketing research firm. The problem is that, upon closer inspection, "most" Americans is actually 58% of just 9000 survey respondents. So, roughly 5200 people in a nation of more than 200 million have concerns about the liberal slant of college professors and that tiny percentage of the total population is presented as representing the views of "most Americans"? Even more interesting is the fact the article seems to go even further in suggesting that there may be some sort of correlation

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