Students’ objection to curriculum should not cause job loss

August 1, 2023

The old-timers among us look around and are stunned, shocked, and in disbelief at some of what they see going on.

One of those things is the “cancel culture,” where people who don’t like or are offended by something or someone proceed to “cancel” it or them. That means having statues torn down or the name of a building changed, or ruining the life or career of a person.

Quite often, the subject of the “cancelation” is someone or something about which the cancelers only know enough to be upset about it or them. And quite often, the cancelers don’t know the whole story behind the subject.

Another one is the idea that if someone is born a male or a female, and they are uncomfortable with that, they can indulge in chemical and/or surgical processes and try to change their gender to the other one.

These ideas did not exist several decades ago, or if they did, they weren’t talked about very much.

Today, the meaning of the idea of “gender” is very broad and fluid among some folks. And there has become a sort of underground rule that these ideas must be accepted by everyone, regardless of what people know or believe.

A recent news item tells the story of a biology professor, Dr. Johnson Varkey. He has been an adjunct professor of biology at St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas for 19 years. And during that time, he has taught Human Anatomy and Physiology to some 1,500 students.

On November 28, 2022, four of Varkey's students walked out of his class when he stated that sex was determined by X and Y chromosomes, just as he always had during his years teaching at the college. Shortly thereafter, he was fired.

However, the school allegedly fired him for teaching his students “that sex was determined by X and Y chromosomes and that reproduction must occur between a male and a female to continue the human species,” according to a report by Fox News Digital. “Despite the fact that Varkey taught from the school-approved and science-based curriculum, St. Philip's College claims his teaching was religious.”

In response to his being fired, Varkey wrote in a communiqué to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, in which he said, "I also explained that when a sperm (which has 23 chromosomes) joins with an egg (which also has 23 chromosomes), a zygote (which has 46 chromosomes) is formed, and it begins to divide, and after 38 weeks a baby is born. Because no information is added or deleted in those 38 weeks, life starts when the zygote begins to divide, not when the baby is born."

The Fox report noted that “in his notice of termination letter, St. Philip’s College said the complaint against him contained several reports of ‘religious preaching, discriminatory comments about homosexuals and transgender individuals, anti-abortion rhetoric, and misogynistic banter.’ The college claims he violated ‘the highest standards of academic honesty and integrity,’ but provided no explanation or reasoning for its accusation.”

"It saddens me that we have come to the place where, in an institution of higher learning, the feelings and opinions of the students are allowed to usurp the facts of science," Varkey told Fox. 

Is there a sensible explanation for why, after 19 years of teaching the same biology course based upon a long-approved curriculum, the college suddenly accepts the allegation of four students that Varkey’s presentation of the course material is religious, discriminatory against some students, anti-abortion and misogynistic? 

In opposing his firing, Varkey’s First Liberty Institute (FLI) attorneys have argued that his classroom work is based upon his biological education and experience, and also his religious beliefs. They also state that "throughout his employment, he never discussed with any student his personal views — religious or otherwise — on human gender or sexuality."

Are college professors and others now expected to adjust the presentation of their subjects so that they don’t offend their students, even if that means abandoning long-held and scientifically sound principles?

“No college professor should be fired for teaching factual concepts that a handful of students don’t want to hear," Keisha Russel, Counsel for FLI and the lead attorney on Varkey’s case, told Fox News Digital. "When public universities silence their own professors from teaching true concepts to students, education has been turned on its head."

The Alamo Colleges District, of which St. Philip’s College is a part, told Fox News Digital it does not comment on personnel issues. 

Science is a process of investigation. At some point, a theory gains acceptance as a general truth, as no different evidence has been presented for a long time. But there is always a chance that something will come along. Therefore, “settled science” is not always settled.

However, the science of gender has not been challenged by new scientific evidence, and two genders reign as the general truth. Colleges and universities ought to be substantially more thoughtful about when they endorse ideas that are significantly different than what is considered the correct scientific position.

And certainly, this situation ought not to have cost a long-time professor his job.

Education is one of the United States’ current serious problems

July 25, 2023

Among the nation’s many current problems is the decline in public education’s success in teaching students the basic subjects they must have to be successful, or even to survive at a suitable level.

Education Week provided a disturbing look at this situation last September. “The results, released today from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ Long-Term Trend test, paint a stark picture of 9-year-olds’ achievement in 2022. Over the past two years, math scores dropped by seven points — the first ever decline in the long-term trend assessment’s 50-year history. Reading scores also fell by five points, the biggest drop since 1990.”

In explaining this disturbing information, Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress, said “These results are sobering,” adding that part of the problem is “that COVID-19 shocked American education and stunted the academic growth of this age group of children.”

Indeed, COVID-19, and the way many in authority over us reacted to it, had a very damaging effect on education. But these problems were not new with the pandemic, as other studies have shown.

Add to that the “progressive” and “woke” elements that have been sneaked into many state and local education systems, some actions by the federal and local governments, and the problem becomes much worse.

The education system — and the public education system in particular, due to the large proportion of our children that parents send to public schools expecting them to be properly educated — is failing in much of America. It is failing the parents and other citizens whose taxes support public education. But, worst of all, it is failing those students who attend those schools. That trust is no longer appropriate for far too many school systems.

Marc Tucker is the president emeritus and a distinguished senior fellow of the National Center on Education and the Economy. He has some interesting comments about education. “In my last blog, I described how high school textbooks that used to be written at the 12th-grade level for 12th graders are now written at the 7th- or 8th-grade level. I cited a report that said that many community college teachers do not assign much writing at all to their first-year students because they cannot write. 

“I revealed that the community college course called College Math is not college math at all, but is in reality just a course in Algebra I — a course that is supposed to be passed in middle school in most states — with a few other topics thrown in, and many community college students cannot do the work. 

“I pointed to data that says that the students who go to the typical four-year college are no better prepared than those attending community colleges. I then pointed to another study that says that for close to 40 percent of our college students, the first two years of college add virtually no value at all, and ‘not much’ value for the rest. 

“I ended by pointing out that, if this is all true, then colleges are typically teaching most students what we used to teach in the high school college-bound track and are not doing it very well.”

Tucker’s revelation was written in 2015.

It was reported by TV station NBC Boston last September that a school district in Massachusetts has been slowly phasing Algebra 1 out of its middle-school curriculum because the advanced math classes were not attended by equal numbers of students of the four racial categories.

This “transition” began in 2017, and was designed to create better equity among math students.

“Equity” is more important in many school systems than merit. It is no longer important that students gain the highest level of knowledge of subjects of which they are capable. It is more important that an equal number of students in each of the races get the same level of knowledge, regardless of how low that level may be.

In higher education, too, it is becoming more important to have the “correct,” or roughly equal numbers of students from various groups than to have the most capable students from whichever groups fill each class level.

But when they are finished with school, how do those students, who really haven’t earned some of the rewards they have received, feel about that? Do they not care? Or, does it negatively affect their self-esteem, self-confidence? Are they really better off having something they did not earn? 

And, when they get into the work-a-day world, will they be able to perform as expected, or will their job performance match their less-than-excellent school performance?

It might feel good or please folks to have the “right” number of each race and gender in every organized group. But what we need, and must have in every critical position is the person most qualified, or at the very least, highly qualified, who has proven their qualification, regardless of their race or gender.

But the critical question is, as this affliction of demanding equal numbers grows, and the level of performance correspondingly falls, will the United States be able to successfully compete on the world stage, or protect itself from its adversaries? 

Two examples of how higher education is failing the country

Today, higher education has serious problems. Between political correctness, wokeness, equity and diversity issues, there are now many problems in classrooms and administrative offices.

Professors, who are the source of many of the classroom problems, are sometimes on the receiving end of political correctness and wokeness mania. 

One such example involves veteran University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) law professor Jason Kilborn.

Just before the first class on the first day of the spring semester this year, UIC’s administration abruptly suspended Kilborn from teaching. He said the administration would not explain what the basis for the indefinite suspension was when he asked.

“This hits you like a ton of bricks,” he said. “It was totally unexpected. You’re totally isolated.”

When he finally learned the reason behind this extreme administrative action, Kilborn learned that UIC had violated his rights to academic freedom. 

On an exam the preceding semester he had posed a hypothetical matter to which the law students were to respond. That issue set off alarms among some hypersensitive members of a student organization. Without discussing their concerns with their teacher, they complained to the law school dean, the University administration, and the media, calling his use of certain language “inexcusable.”

Just what momentous transgression had Kilborn committed? He had employed a long-used hypothetical issue in the law school exam that contained two redacted slurs. The question about employment discrimination included a female plaintiff being called “a ‘n____’ and ‘b____’” as explosive evidence of the discrimination. But even redacting the terms didn’t save Kilborn from being targeted by his university.

“Undergrad teaches students to think, but law schools, medical schools — they have to teach students how to do,” Kilborn said. As someone who has taught law for 21 years, he understands that concept, and had structured his curriculum to accomplish that goal.

Explaining his technique, he said, “In virtually every one of my law classes, I try to put that scalpel in my students’ hands and ask them: What do you do?”  “These hypotheticals,” he explained, “really force students, future lawyers, to be confronted with the messy reality they’ll be faced with in the outside world.”

Kilborn was eventually reinstated through action by FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), but this occurrence paints a very clear picture of some of what has driven higher education at many institutions in our country from being a valuable asset, to being a politically-driven wasteland.

This is not the only case where a professor has been targeted for controversial expression. FIRE research into the rise in collegiate scholars punished for their constitutionally protected speech reveals that fully 74 percent of targeting incidents are successful. What that means is that the target professor ends up with some type of punishment, such as investigations or suspension. And FIRE noted that one in four targeted scholars lose their job.

Working hard to not upset students while trying to help them learn how to deal with the real world they are preparing to enter has become, in far too many cases, more important than the actual process of preparing them to survive and prosper after college.

Another professor trying to cope with this new upside-down campus environment was not suspended. Instead, he decided he had had enough.

Professor Peter Boghossian had taught philosophy at Portland State University for the last decade. He quit his teaching post, submitting his letter of resignation to the school’s provost, and also publishing that letter.

His problems began, he explained, because he started asking critical questions. “Unlike my colleagues, I asked these questions out loud and in public.” The more he spoke out, the more push-back he got. So, he began publishing articles with two other people demonstrating how critical thinking had gradually faded from importance at Portland.

These articles resulted in him being attacked and verbally harassed by both students and faculty. This harassment included being spit on, and being threatened as he walked to and from classes.

When he went to Portland, he believed he was joining a group of professional people that were committed to growing critical thinkers, not machines. He believed his job was not to tell students what to think, but to teach them how to think, he said. But Portland no longer pursues its original mission.

In his letter to the university’s provost, Boghossian, explained, “But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.”

He continued, “Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions” based on rigorous research, critical thinking and listening to diverse voices.

The education and degrees so many have sought and benefitted from for so long have, in many institutions, become little more than a certification of successful adopting of a political attitude that challenges America’s fundamental principles.

Helping young adults grow intellectually and gain needed skills isn’t their goal. Turning America into another socialist failure is their goal. And the movement is expanding.

The quality of U.S. K-12 and college education is on the decline

As recently as 20 years ago, HistoryNet tells us, the United States led the world in high school and college education.  

However, the American education system has lost ground. That is not to say that there are no schools or school systems that are doing well, or that no students are learning. But the U.S. standing among nations of the world has fallen to a frightening degree over the last several years.

“Every American family needs to open The Nation’s Report Card [the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress] this year and think about what it means for their child and for our country’s future,” said Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. “The results are, frankly, devastating. This country is in a student achievement crisis, and over the past decade it has continued to worsen, especially for our most vulnerable students.”

Her warning didn’t end there. "Two out of three of our nation’s children aren’t proficient readers. In fact, fourth grade reading declined in 17 states and eighth grade reading declined in 31,” she said. “The gap between the highest and lowest performing students is widening, despite $1 trillion in Federal spending over 40 years designated specifically to help close it.”

The Atlantic magazine reported on a 2001 study by the Brookings Institute which, in fact, showed that international students found their U.S. classes “much easier” than classes in their home country. That number rose from nearly 60 percent of foreign students in 2001 to 66.4 percent in a 2016 study.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) administers an exam every three years. It is considered the gold standard for such data. The most recent available results from the exam, titled the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), is from 2015. PISA measures reading, math and science in 15-year-olds in 72 countries every three years.

** The U.S. ranked 18th in Reading. The top five were: Singapore, Ireland, Canada, Hong Kong, and Japan. 

** The U.S ranked 36th in Math, with the top five being: Singapore, Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, Macau (China), Japan.

** And we ranked 22nd in Science, with the leaders being: Singapore, Japan, Estonia, Chinese Taipei, Canada.

The U.S. scored just above the average of all nations in reading and science, and below average in math. East Asian and northern European countries tend to dominate the exam.

Among the most advanced countries, the U.S. ranks 38th out of 40 in graduating science majors, according to the 2015 Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard report from the OECD.

And America is way behind China and India in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) graduates, the academic areas our future depends upon to a great degree.

“China had at least 4.7 million recent STEM grads as of 2016; India had 2.6 million as of 2017; the U.S. pulls in at third at 568,000,” according to the World Economic Forum. In terms of graduates per thousand population, the U.S. is about even with India with one grad per 573 people, but far behind China with one grad per 293 people.

Being challenged by China, our leading economic competitor, is a serious problem. Will we have enough future engineers and scientists to protect our lead in high technology fields, or will we be replaced by the Chinese?

Business Insider worries that “While American scientists still publish more papers than their international counterparts, and American companies still register more patents, not nearly enough students are graduating with degrees in STEM fields to keep pace with the rest of the world.”

The reasons for America’s declining educational performance are many and varied. Some are systemic. Some are cultural. Some are political.

The Brookings report also reflected that foreign students also say that American students spend far more time on sports than on academics.

“Nearly two-thirds of foreign-exchange students in the United States view American teenagers as placing a much higher value on athletic success than teens in their home countries do,” Brookings reported. “By comparison, only 5 percent of international students say American teens place a much higher value on success in mathematics than teenagers abroad. Around 65 percent of foreign-exchange students also feel that American teens spend less time on homework than their international peers.”

Standardized testing is a frequent target for blame. By placing so much attention on performance on these tests, it is argued, much class time and other resources that could be put to better use is wasted, and students learn what they need for the test, to the detriment of broader and deeper learning of subject matter.

Another area of criticism is the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. Common Core was heralded as “dramatically improving teaching and learning” and, indeed, “transforming education for every child.” It hasn’t. The Hill commented, “Under the suffocating hand of Common Core, true academic achievement is withering.”

The late Joseph Sobran years ago wrote, “In 100 years we have gone from teaching Latin and Greek in high school to teaching remedial English in college.” 

We have replaced so many of the concepts that made us strong for “newer and better ideas,” and now we are paying the price.

Colleges are taking it on the chin lately

The bad news for higher education keeps piling up. Recent scandals involving parents bribing people to help get their otherwise-unqualified kids into elite schools and the new story of sexual impropriety at Ohio State University add to the list.  

Such things as challenges to free speech on campus and the imposition of politically correct mandates that run contrary to common sense have dramatically changed things for higher education.

The traditional role of colleges to help students mature into rational and knowledgeable adults that are prepared to deal with the stresses of life is no longer a given.

Once a place for young people to prepare for a career in an idea-rich forum that challenges them to consider new and different perspectives, many campuses have developed “safe spaces” where students can seek refuge from reality, sometimes when instructors provide them with “trigger warnings” in advance of possible “troubling” topics in the classroom.

The complete shutting out of certain unpopular ways of thinking about things often occurs when the dominant left-liberal philosophy of many campuses is threatened by the presence of a conservative or religious speaker. These existential threats turn otherwise normal calm, rational people in their late teens and 20s into mobs protesting these speakers, sometimes violently, even if they are not required to go and hear what they have to say.

These highly negative attributes are not present in all institutions of higher learning, of course, and perhaps one or more of your former schools has avoided this plague. But the trend is extensive, and is growing, and threatens to debase the once-proud custom of a college education.

More and different criticisms of higher education appear in Dr. Walter Williams’ column from last week referencing a new book titled “Restoring the Promise” by Richard Vedder, Ohio University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Economics.

Williams, himself a professor of economics, in fact the John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics at George Mason University, cites Vedder’s view that our universities "are vastly too expensive, often costing twice as much per student compared with institutions in other industrialized democracies," and that while exceptions exist, students "on average are learning relatively little, spend little time in academic preparation and in some disciplines are indoctrinated by highly subjective ideology."

The latter point supports the idea that too often college students are taught not “how” to think, but “what” to think.

Other points Williams makes from Vedder and other sources include:

** There is a mismatch between student occupational expectations after graduation, and labor market realities. College graduates often find themselves employed as baristas, retail clerks and taxi drivers.

** Data from the New York Federal Reserve Banks and the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that each dollar of federal aid increases tuition by 60 cents.

** Very little improvement in critical reasoning skills occurs in college, and college graduates are less literate than they once were. Areas of exception to this trend are engineering, nursing, architecture and accounting.

** Vedder says that student ineptitude is not surprising since they spend little time in classrooms and studying, and cites weak preparation in high school as another reason. In 2010 and 2013 NAEP test scores, 37 percent of 12th-graders were proficient in reading, 25 percent in math, 12 percent in history, 20 percent in geography and 24 percent in civics.

It seems that the “every child should go to college” craze is blessedly over and the college bubble I have quietly predicted for a few years appears to be upon us. 

After high school, kids must focus on how they are going to make a living for themselves, and perhaps a family. The basic K-12 educational curriculum ought to provide them a good background to do that.

Many good paying jobs may require post-secondary training, but not a 4-year college degree, or more, therefore many, perhaps most, high school graduates should not seek a college degree.

Williams concludes his column with this: “Vedder ends ‘Restoring the Promise’ with a number of proposals with which I agree:"

“--College administrative staff often exceeds the teaching staff. Vedder says, ‘I doubt there is a major campus in America where you couldn't eliminate very conservatively 10 percent of the administrative payroll (in dollar terms) without materially impacting academic performance.’"

“--Reevaluate academic tenure. Tenure is an employment benefit that has costs, and faculty members should be forced to make tradeoffs between it and other forms of university compensation."

“--Colleges of education, with their overall poor academic quality, are an embarrassment on most campuses and should be eliminated."

“--End speech codes on college campuses by using the University of Chicago Principles on free speech."

“--Require a core curriculum that incorporates civic and cultural literacy."

“--The most important measure of academic reforms is to make university governing boards independent and meaningful. In my opinion, most academic governing boards are little more than yes men for the president and provost.”

At this point it is difficult to tell if this will get straightened out, and what higher education will look like if it does. Certainly, it will be a difficult period for colleges.

Signs of a culture that is collapsing: higher education in disarray

Higher education today is a mess. Many institutions are involved in an arms race, strongly competing to attract students with scholarship and student loan money they bring with them. Institutions are building facilities that are much more fancy, thus more appealing, than ever before. New dorms, sports and fitness centers, student centers, dining facilities; the list goes on.

And the “everybody needs to go to college” craze has put thousands on campuses that don’t need a traditional college degree.

Those of us who went to college many years before this arms race began endured sparsely appointed dorms and other comparatively plain-Jane facilities, but managed to come out with a solid education. That austere environment is not good enough anymore.

A 2014 survey by the University of California Los Angeles showed that there are five times more liberal professors than conservative professors on college faculties these days. The worst aspect of this is that many of them have taken on the role of proselytizers, forsaking their duty to guide learning and maturation in their subject area in favor of indoctrinating students into the poisonous world of leftist politics, which they now refer to as “progressivism,” since “liberalism” is no longer credible.

The liberalization of the college campus has led to a disintegration of the traditional college atmosphere at many institutions, where students once were exposed to and challenged by a broad range of ideas. That healthy environment has become an intellectually stultifying atmosphere where students are afraid of their own shadows, and ideas differing from their narrow range of acceptable ideas send kids running to hide under the bed in their hotel-like dorm room.

“Trigger warnings” are expected or required to protect those who desire only peace and harmony in their environment from “unsuitable” content, and “safe zones,” where students may seek refuge from the rigors of life, are routine. Student demands played a part in these developments

The recent focus on transgenderism, and the bending-over-backward efforts to accommodate it, has produced a policy at West Virginia University, where anyone failing to use the personal pronoun preferred by each and every person who claims to be transgender is breaking a federal law on sexual discrimination, and will be treated as a lawbreaker by the university, despite that transgenderism has absolutely no grounding in science whatsoever.

Two questions arise: (1) How does someone know which of WVU’s 29,000 students claims to be transgender, and (2) in the event they actually are able to discern this, how are they supposed to know which of the 30 different pronouns approved by WVU applies to which person?

“According to one study of the 2010 census,” notes breibart.com, “the population of transgender people amounts to one in every 2,400 Americans, or 0.03 percent of the adult population.” Another question: How few people are too few to propel the politically correct into action, spawning another uproar over some thought or action that has virtually no affect?

Back in the 60s and 70s a long and often-troubled struggle to desegregate schools and put black and white students in the same learning environment reached its peak. Forty years later, some want to reverse that. Everything old is new again.

Columnist and professor Walter Williams writes, “Hampshire College will offer some of its students what the school euphemistically calls ‘identity-based housing.’ That’s segregated housing for students who — because of their race, culture, gender or sexual orientation — have ‘historically experienced oppression.’” This idea extends to racially segregated classes where students will feel better when surrounded by those just like them.

In his column titled “College Campus Lunacy,” Williams supports that title by listing some course titles that if completed successfully confer college credit on students: “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “Demystifying the Hipster,” “Recreational Tree Climbing,” and “Kayne vs. Everybody.” Such courses, he said, are the work of faculty, to whom college presidents and trustees have apparently surrendered the running of those institutions.

Now, however, an institution of higher education has decided that it’s time to call a halt to political correctness. University of Chicago Dean of Students John Ellison warned incoming students in a letter that there is no tolerance for the kind of student demands that have emerged recently. “Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings,’ we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

“Members of our community are encouraged to speak, write, listen, challenge, and learn, without fear of censorship,” Ellison wrote. Noting the importance of civility among and between parties, he stated, “We expect members of our community to be engaged in rigorous debate, discussion, and even disagreement. At times, this may challenge you and even cause discomfort.”

A college education should help prepare young people to cope with life, not to fear it. Political correctness is an infection threatening the nation. Getting rid of it on campuses is a big step toward producing young Americans that are educated, grown up, and prepared to experience life.

The verdict is in: college professors are overwhelmingly liberal

Colleges are infected with liberal foolishness to a higher degree than ever before. It seems the most popular activity in colleges today is being offended. Many students are offended by such dastardly threats as contrary opinions, and males standing up while talking to seated females. This is the nature of things at too many campuses these days.

“Trigger warnings” are required to warn students of potentially “troubling class material,” and “microaggressions,” which are words and phrases that offend someone, even when the speaker intended no offense, are a really big deal.

A Harvard Law School dean has compared microaggressions to sexual assault and violence, and the University of California lists things that are just too horrible to say, including threatening phrases, like "everyone can succeed in this society, if they work hard enough" and "America is the land of opportunity." Rough stuff, that.

Such terrifying things slip by traditional, older Americans unnoticed, but cripple younger folk. These hallmarks of modern American liberalism have grown from the seeds that sprouted the belief that feelings are more important than anything, and that everyone deserves a trophy for merely showing up.

Americans who graduated from the school of hard knocks are amazed and bemused at the hypersensitive nature of our once-tough culture, and wonder how this could have occurred. Our education system, at all levels, played a big role.

As these changes occurred they were accompanied by, and perhaps abetted by, the liberalization of the college professoriate.

The Daily Signal published an article discussing a UCLA Higher Education Research Institute study that documents the increase in liberal professors. “During the past quarter-century, academia has seen a nearly 20-percent jump in the number of professors who identify as liberal,” writes Natalie Johnson. “That increase has created a lopsided ideological spread in higher education, with liberal professors now outpacing their conservative counterparts by a ratio of roughly 5 to 1.”

In 1990 only about 41 percent of professors identified themselves as “liberal” or “far-left,” but by 2014 the percentage had risen to 60. Over that same period those identifying as “conservative” or “far-right” fell from 18 to 13 percent.

In 2011 liberal profs reached their highest point at 63 percent, while conservatives reached a high of only 22 percent, in 1993. At the other end, liberals never fell below the 41 percent mark, while conservatives were as low as 12 percent in 2011.

In a perfect world this political imbalance should make little difference. After all, what difference does it make if your math professor is a Democrat, Republican, unaffiliated with a party, a Trotsky-ite or whatever? Math is math, right? Biology, music theory, graphic arts, English grammar and most other subjects are not political in nature. And in an atmosphere where professors merely guide students in learning their subject, it wouldn’t matter. But what if for some strange reason it became trendy for professors to inject a bit of political proselytization into their lectures and lessons?

But isn’t secretly and deliberately indoctrinating young people with ideological attitudes while they think they are only studying how to write a proper sentence, determine a standard deviation, or studying the War Between the States fundamentally dishonest, you may ask? Yes, it certainly is. But bias isn’t always deliberate, according to Matthew Woessner, an associate professor of political science and public policy at Penn State Harrisburg.

He said this ideological imbalance “raises critical questions of whether students are getting a balanced education—not because there’s some conspiracy to block out conservative ideas, but merely because the people who are teaching are either not familiar with or don’t embrace conservative ideas.” Even when faculty attempt to present an issue in a balanced and impartial manner, he said, personal biases naturally bleed into material.

The UCLA study reflects that this liberal tilt among professors has had an effect, with data from 2009 showing that the number of students who said their political views were “liberal” or “far left” grew by 9.2 percent from their freshman year to their senior year.

Daniel Klein, a professor of economics at George Mason University, cast more of a cloud on the collegiate atmosphere, opining that the reported 5-to-1 ratio is “not very meaningful” because the terms “liberal” and “conservative” have become “exceedingly troubled.” Instead, Klein suggested that the imbalance between faculty members who vote Democratic compared with those who vote Republican is closer to 9-to-1 or even 10-to-1.

Ideally, there would be relative equality of liberal and conservative ideology among faculty. Woessner, however, suggests that equal numbers of liberal and conservative professors really isn’t necessary for higher education to work well, so long as a sufficient number of faculty hold different views “to create a space for enough conservative ideas that students are exposed at least nominally to these other perspectives,” he said.

It is critical for colleges and universities to work much harder to even out the ideological divide if higher education is to regain credibility for delivering a balanced education. No group should want that more than the professors themselves, who should prefer a reputation of integrity as opposed to one of having a finger on the scale.

Higher education under attack from within, by disaffected students

College campuses – once the bastion of diverse opinion, a garden where ideas thrived, where contrary viewpoints were freely expressed – are fast becoming cesspools of narrow-mindedness that stifle free speech, where political correctness rules over common sense, where free thinking is discouraged, and they are occupied more and more by students offended because someone expressed a different opinion, didn’t pay proper deference, or wore the “wrong” costume on Halloween.

Student protests are returning to 1960s/70s levels, and arise because some students think that there aren’t enough minority professors on campus while others decry a lack of “social justice,” and some have called for hunger strikes over what they perceive as a lack of support for students of color.

If students don’t like a professor’s point of view, or they detect “microaggressions” in the classroom, they feel led to demand the professor resign or be fired. You are a Hispanic kid and someone wears a sombrero and a poncho on Halloween, it’s time for a protest.

And did you know that the First Amendment makes some college kids feel unsafe? Would you ever have imagined that such an idea could take hold on an American college campus?

The vice president of the Missouri Students Association, Brenda Smith-Lezama, told MSNBC last week, "I personally am tired of hearing that First Amendment rights protect students when they are creating a hostile and unsafe learning environment for myself and for other students here." Poor little thing must be terrified listening to rap or watching television or movie drama. And she suffers under the delusion that her comfort is more important than someone else’s.

While these kids have yet to accomplish much, they believe the world must work to calm their fears, perceptions that may be adequate to drive protests and hunger strikes, but their perceptions do not necessarily reflect reality. The concerns expressed by these students are precisely the types of things the liberal attitudes that prevail on campuses today work to eliminate.

Many of the complaints have a racial element, but they really center on hypersensitive feelings about things that have always been normal aspects of life. Suddenly, these normal campus happenings that students – white students, black students, Asian and Hispanic students, female students – have dealt with successfully for decades and with little or no difficulty, are now scary and threatening.

College once was a place where kids learned to think. Today, many of them seem to know only how to feel; emotion rules rationality. Listening to different ideas used to be enlightening, mind-expanding. Now, it makes the kiddies cry for their mommies.

Missing from these children-in-adult-bodies is even the suspicion that not everything revolves around them, that they are not the be-all and end-all of the known universe.

And they also want someone to pay their college loans off for them, because … well, just because.

The process of gaining entry to an institution of higher learning is long established and has worked well for decades. Colleges and universities are places where the qualified my go to advance their education, and most of the onus is on the student to fund their education through parental help, scholarship assistance, student loans, the GI Bill, or good old hard work. And then it is the student’s responsibility to perform as expected academically to complete their degree requirements, and then go out and get a job and become a productive member of society.

That is called “life,” and life is not a smooth ride, most times. But tens of millions of Americans have successfully navigated the sometimes-troubled waters successfully without being coddled and nursed along the way. Conquering challenges and facing adversity head-on build character.

The whining behavior demonstrated on several campuses recently shows a fundamental failure of thousands of young people to have learned the basic rules of life, and have their minds grow up at the same rate as their bodies.

However, bowing to the whims of students is letting the inmates run the asylum. College is a place for learning, or once was. Professors led the learning process, administrators ran the school, and the students worked hard and did what they had to do to master the material at a satisfactory level. If students weren’t happy in a particular environment, or couldn’t hack it, they were free to leave. Or they could simply adapt. If that dynamic isn’t restored very soon, we may as well shut down colleges, because they will no longer provide a benefit.

As bad as this is for higher education, it is much worse for America. A generation or two with millions of young people among them who can’t cope with the simplistic problems of going to college surely won’t be able to be good citizens, to hold down jobs in a productive economy, or staff a strong, able military capable of defending the country, or even make sensible decisions about for whom they will vote. They can hardly be expected to weigh complex arguments rationally, when anything that doesn’t agree with their narrow ideas makes them hide under their beds.

This is what liberalism hath wrought, and it will most likely get worse.