Why Conservatives Hate Higher Education

Conservatives talk all the time about liberal indoctrination in college. This is ridiculous. I can’t even get the students to do the reading, not to mention change them to my point of view. But what does happen in college is that it is the only time in many people’s lives that they hear ideas that aren’t echo chamber. At home, in their churches, among their friends who come from similar churches and homes, they hear the same thing over and over again. So when you are exposed to people of other view points, some people at least will start rethinking their world, especially when they are young and maybe haven’t really thought about these issues all that much. New research suggests this, showing that a sizable percentage of liberals and conservatives respect the other side more during their college years as they are exposed to different ideas. Now, this is equally true of both sides, but for conservatives, this is in fact liberal indoctrination. One of the researchers discusses it:

In an email interview, he said there are many reasons that the public perceives liberal indoctrination in higher education that this research suggests doesn’t exist.

“Being enrolled at a liberal arts institution or exposed to a liberal education is not about being indoctrinated into a left-leaning political set of philosophies, but about [being] engaged in an educational environment designed to encourage freedom of thought and expression, to equip students with the skills needed to evaluate truth claims and subsequently form thoughtful and responsible opinions, and to grow in appreciation of ideas represented by differing political narratives,” he said. “When context becomes critical in understanding nuances like these, words like liberal — and often conservative — are easy to weaponize, especially in social media spaces where attention spans are short and context is often reduced to a few characters.”

Liberals actually value this, but conservatives do not. So when little Bobby comes home at Thanksgiving and says, you know, maybe the gays shouldn’t be put in camps, the blame goes straight to the colleges and the evil professors indoctrinating our good Christian kids in the ways of Satan.