"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 between the lack of conservatism among college professors and declining church attendance among Christian youth as well as casting doubts upon the quality of education that liberal professors are providing.
I don't think that there is any question that bias exists among people from all walks of life. We all view the world through the lens of our backgrounds, values and personal experiences. Those filters are going to cause bias; it is unavoidable. I think the real problem is not so much that college professors or people in any other profession, for that matter, exhibit biases in their thinking but rather that as a nation we seem to have become very suspicious and ready to believe that any difference of opinion among individuals is actually some sort of sinister plot.
President Obama's address to school children is a prime example. The overall message seemed straight forward enough: stay in school, set goals and take personal responsibility for your own education. But some suggested that the President's address was actually a veiled attempt to indoctrinate school children to his own political agenda. And when an advance copy of the speech revealed nothing sinister, I read a few online comments which suggested that the speech was "sanitized" at the last minute in order to cover up the original "evil intent".
The United States is a nation of immense freedom and diversity. The beauty of our nation is that we have the opportunity to hear a variety of perspectives and decide for ourselves whether to embrace them or not. It would seem to me that college is an ideal setting for being exposed to any number of differing ideologies from professors and classmates alike. If our goal is to simply remain wrapped securely in the cocoon of the ideas and values of our parents and hometown crowd, then why even bother going to college at all?
The world at large has never been, and likely never will be, a completely fair and balanced place. Biases exist and learning how to cope with the sometime unfair biases with which we are faced is just as important to our education as the information we glean from textbooks and college lectures. I think that women and ethnic minorities have always been cognizant of that fact while members of the previously dominant culture are still adjusting. But I don't believe that professor bias can accurately be defined as a "problem." Conversely, it presents simply one more opportunity for students to gain exposure to different perspectives and hopefully, achieve intellectual growth as they complete the process of sorting them all out. And isn't that, in the long run what higher education is really all about?
References:
Barrick, Audrey. "Most Americans View Political Bias of College Professors as a Problem," The Christian Post, July 19, 2007.
Chow, Christopher. "New Study Reveals Extreme Partisan Bias Among Faculty," Accuracy in Academia, October 2002.