“Modern institutions of higher learning have changed dramatically in the last
half-century, and from the moment students set foot on the contemporary
campus, their Christian convictions and disciplines are assaulted.”
J. Budziszewski
system that actually encourages instructors not to do so.
For instance, consider the practice of allowing students
to evaluate their professors. Although I’m not opposed
to evaluations per se, unfortunately, a large contingent of
students reward professors who sacrifice academic stan-
dards. “Good” evaluations (those with high marks) often
come with comments like “let us out of class early” or
“didn’t care if I turned work in late.” In contrast, professors
with high expectations can receive low marks because
some students almost always resent the professor who
will not dumb down the course. When universities make
instructor advancement dependent—at least, partially
so—on these evaluations, they encourage instructors
to lower standards so as not to risk offending students.
I regularly saw this tendency in lower-level instructors,
but I also saw tenured professors grade graduate students
too easily because doing so offered various rewards.
What I came to realize is the college is extremely
hesitant to fail anyone because doing so will impact the
school’s bottom line. Although my school is relatively
inexpensive, most students pay around $20,000 per year
in tuition. One can easily surmise how losing even a
handful of students—even if those students are honestly
suited for endeavors other than college—would frus-
trate college administration. Unfortunately, sacrificing
academic proficiency is just one way in which colleges
shortchange their students in order to financially benefit
schools. A more detailed analysis of the situation will
reveal a host of other symptoms of the same disease;
skyrocketing tuition that takes full advantage of guaran-
teed federal student loans and a plethora of exorbitant
fees that schools force onto uninformed students are two
examples of the same problem. When I see groups of
potential college students touring my campus, I wish I
could tell them that even if they do manage to graduate,
they will have earned degrees of little intellectual worth.
Even worse, their degrees will cost them a fortune and
enslave them to enormous debt for a great deal of their
adult lives.
To be fair, although school administration and many
faculty members primarily concern themselves with
financial issues, there are those who disregard monetary
concerns in favor of another important factor: ideology.
In my opinion, political ideology is the second most
important motivator within the university. Because
“faculty at colleges and universities of all kinds in America
are overwhelmingly liberal in their political ideology,
creating a strong campus political culture … faculty
are heavily weighted towards the Left” 1 you will find a
majority of faculty promoting extreme leftist agendas
both in and outside the classroom. For example, in my
field, English, “fully 54% … identify as Democrat and
60% as liberal, and only 11% as Republican … a 5-to-1
ratio.” Their political biases have led my professors to
champion everything from Marxism, environmentalism,
postcolonial and feminist ideologies while denigrating
any position that doesn’t square with their pet causes.
I’ve had a wide range of experiences that confirm the
left-leaning tendencies of college faculty. For example,
during my first week of grad school, my linguistics
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