Trust in higher education is near an all-time low, and a new Yale University report suggests colleges have only themselves to blame.
In addition to problems such as high prices, opaque admissions processes, and declining academic standards, the report highlighted that many universities have become “intellectual and ideological echo chambers, out of touch with the American nation and out of step with its political currents.”
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“Estimates suggest that registered Democrats outnumber registered Republicans among faculty nationwide by a margin of about 10 to 1,” the report notes. At Yale, it notes the problem is even worse, with registered Democrats outnumbering Republicans by 36 to 1 across the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Law School, and the School of Management.
Moreover, the Yale report notes that the ideological imbalance has gotten worse over time. According to data from the Higher Education Research Institute and Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, as recently as 1989, just 45% of faculty nationwide identified as liberal, compared to 39% who said they were moderate and 16% who identified as conservative. Fast forward to today, and a whopping 74% of faculty identify as liberal, while just 15% are moderate and 11% are conservative.
The problem is not just that the far-left ideologues in academia have pushed out conservatives — it is that they have pushed out centrists, too. Faculty promotion on college campuses works to entrench the left-wing faction because tenure and advancement are granted to professors by fellow faculty members who support them. What these data show is that universities across the country have become a giant left-wing echo chamber in which even non-political voices are not tolerated. Only those who toe the Democratic Party line on every issue are allowed to advance. As the Yale report stresses, “echo chambers do not produce the best teaching, research, or scholarship.”
As a direct result of the political polarization of faculty, the public, and especially conservatives, has lost faith in higher education.
As recently as 2015, 60% of adults trusted the higher education system. Today, just 42% do. For Republicans, the level is even lower, with just 26% saying they have a good deal or quite a lot of trust in four-year colleges and universities.
After the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre of nearly 1,200 people in Israel, many Americans were horrified by demonstrations at colleges supporting the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. Both students and faculty cheered on the pogroms of innocent men, women, and children. In subsequent congressional hearings, many presidents of America’s most prestigious colleges were indifferent at best about their students supporting slaughter, and arrogant at worst.
The public has rightly concluded that institutions of higher learning have become bastions of illiberalism, propagating views that are anathema to our values. Universities cannot expect to maintain broad and sustainable support if they cater only to half of the country at most. But this is what they’ve been doing for decades. Today’s reckoning is long past due.
As colleges provide less and less value at higher and higher costs, people are understandably reluctant to send their children to be brainwashed.
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No institution built to cater to a small portion of the country can maintain support in perpetuity. Intellectual diversity is essential. Some institutions, such as Hillsdale College and the University of Austin, have emerged to offer an attractive choice.
But if colleges and universities expect to survive the political, economic, and technological tumult ahead, they will have to make sweeping changes. Echo chambers must be eliminated, and freedom of thought restored.
