Friday, April 01, 2005

Intellectual Diversity on College Campuses

The Volokh Conspiracy has a good post on this topic. If you haven't noticed this, another survey has shown that college professors overwhelmingly define themselves as Liberal or Moderate. Those that do almost unerringly vote Democrat. This leaves only a small fraction of professors, around an eighth, who are Conservative.

The Liberal response to this is "it's because we're smarter!" The Conservative response is "wow a bunch people in an ivory tower largely funded by federal grants skews liberal? You don't say..."

I thought about going into academia once. That is why I did a stand-alone Masters program instead of getting it through work. I wanted to use it as a testing period to see if I wanted to get my doctorate. I didn't. It also taught me that college professors are smart, but they aren't that smart. I was one step ahead of my advisor on a lot of things. And they have an awful tendency towards arrogance towards anyone without a Ph.D. after their names.

Incidentally, if you have a choice between a standalone masters and work paying for it, choose work. You will progress faster at work and still won't have to pay for anything. The people at my workplace who started working and went back for their masters are at least a year ahead of me, maybe two.

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