As everyone knows, the price of higher education has been going up for years. At the University of California, for example, tuition was raised 32 percent in 2010 and 8 percent in 2011. The next increase could be as high as 20 percent in early 2013.

Kevin Wolfman

Naturally, a lot of students and parents are upset. So some people — very Learned People, of course — try to reassure the wretched masses by touting the availability of scholarships and financial aid, which can knock several thousand dollars per year off a college’s sticker price. As Dr. Robert Weisbuch, former president of Drew University, puts it: “There is retail and net, and almost no one pays retail.”

That may be true. But of course, funds from these kinds of programs are often labeled “awards” for a reason: they’re competitive and limited. Not everyone who needs a scholarship will win one, and financial aid often doesn’t go far enough. Loans must be taken out to make up the difference between what is needed and what is “awarded.”

Still, the Learned People argue that the sheer number of colleges in America makes higher education a “buyer’s market.” With so many quality schools to choose from, students and parents who shop around are just bound to find a great deal. According to Weisbuch, at colleges where “competition for students is fierce,” it’s even possible to “bargain aggressively” for a better price.

In other words: if tuition is draining your bank account, it’s your own fault, for either a) not going somewhere cheaper in the first place, or b) not using your psychic powers to predict all those tuition increases that occurred at your school after you matriculated. Weisbuch, for his part, graciously advises everybody concerned about the rising cost of higher education to “shaddup.”

Frankly, this tone-deaf perspective sounds like something overheard at a Tea Party rally or (redundancy alert) the upcoming Republican National Convention. But in any event, preaching about the wonders of scholarships, financial aid, “investment,” and (imaginary) market forces completely misses the bigger picture. The real problem is not that these affordability tools don’t work quite as well as the Learned People would like them to. It’s that they’re needed in the first place.

College is the new high school. Decades ago, an eighteen-year-old could finish high school, find a job, and make a steady career of it. With nothing but a diploma and a good work ethic, he or she could own a piece of the American Dream. Today, of course, things are different. Practically speaking, to even think about securing a foothold in the middle class, you need a college degree.

Yes, there are a determined, lucky few who manage to hit the jackpot without going to college. But there’s a reason these people make it on the evening news and have Aaron Sorkin write screenplays about them: they are very, very rare.

The career fields likely to drive the American economy in the coming decades are overwhelmingly technical, professional, and specialized: health care, information technology, engineering, and the sciences. Proficiency in any one of these basically requires post-secondary education, and colleges and universities have the infrastructure and resources to properly train people in them. Wikipedia and the public library do not.

A patchwork, limited financial aid “award” system was sufficient when America didn’t need a large percentage of its graduates to be college-educated. If tuition increases rendered the “award” amounts insufficient for a lot of people, no big deal — students priced out of the ivory tower could still find meaningful work with their diplomas, and the manufacturing economy would keep chugging merrily along.

Reality has changed since then. America needs more of its workforce to receive higher education. However, fewer workers can afford to pay the bill for it — and there simply aren’t enough “awards” available to cover the gap.

The system is obsolete, nothing more than a flimsy Band-Aid. It makes the surface look a little better, but it doesn’t address the underlying problem. Which is this: college is a necessity, but it’s being funded like an option.

Perhaps it’s time to view higher education the same way we’ve viewed primary and secondary schooling for years — as a vital tool for developing a basically trained, educated citizenry. And if a degree is as important now as a diploma used to be, shouldn’t it cost the same amount of money as the latter to obtain?

Kevin Wolfman is a a writer and project editor at the Center for Digital Education and the Center for Digital Government, divisions of e.Republic, Inc. He is a former teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is the author of Not Politics: The Student’s Guide to Political Science. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

The post Kevin Wolfman: Why College is Priceless — But Still too Pricey appeared first on Education News.

Kevin Wolfman

Outrage predictably ensued. But Maher’s point — that schools asserting the truth of religious doctrine with no evidence to back it up are not operating as “schools” at all, but rather as churches — deserves consideration. After all, just how “religious” can a religious school be without turning into a de facto church? And on the other hand, how secular can it get before becoming “just a school”?

Religious colleges struggle to reconcile the assertions of their leaders and holy books with the knowledge and reasoning of scientists and textbooks. As faith-based organizations, they have a mission to propagate and defend religious doctrine, which by its very nature is unscientific and requires a suspension of logical reasoning and disbelief. But as places of higher learning, they also have a duty to promote intellectual maturation, critical thinking skills, and competence in scientific reasoning.

These dual obligations have a nasty and frequent tendency to butt heads. Religious colleges continually wrestle with the question of whether to embrace the knowledge and values of contemporary society, however awkwardly, or stand in principled opposition to it all.

Either approach could fail in the end. Those that stubbornly resist the winds of progress and change risk alienating themselves in the academic marketplace, sliding slowly but surely into irrelevance. On the other hand, the ones that choose to adapt risk compromising on faith so much that they ultimately become secular.

Can a college be both a church and a school without eventually sacrificing one or both parts of its identity? Is any religious institution truly able to fully embrace social change and scientific progress without abandoning belief? Or, is being “religious” inherently reactionary and anti-intellectual?

To deal with the conflict between faith and modernity, some religious schools try to have it both ways: they mix science and faith together. For example, once evolution became widely accepted in the scientific community, some religious schools (and their churches) began teaching students that the six “days” of Biblical creation were figurative — each day could actually mean millions or billions of years. This helped the schools preserve a degree of academic integrity.

But concessions like this can only be taken so far. By incorporating science at the expense of traditional doctrine — even just a little bit — religious colleges are, in effect, admitting that their sacred texts and long-standing beliefs cannot go toe-to-toe intellectually against scientific observation, where such observation exists. And how many times can a religious college concede the intellectual shortcomings of its doctrine, and accommodate the scientific and social realities of the modern world, before it ceases to be “religious” at all?

Some institutions deal with this dilemma by effectively avoiding it. Instead of attempting the uncomfortable act of balancing religion and reason, they simply reject the latter. Schools like Liberty University build ideological walls around their campuses, shielding students from blasphemous intellectual assaults on their ages-old worldviews. Curricula and rules are designed to promote religious belief and adherence to “tradition,” not to honestly educate students in the ways of the world.

When a school — in this case, Liberty — has a Doctrinal Statement proclaiming absolutely that “The universe was created in six historical days” (not figurative) and “human beings were directly created, not evolved,” it’s not hard to see where its loyalties lie.

That said, many religious colleges and academics take great pains to act like legitimate educators — while maintaining a faith identity at the same time. It’s an awkward position to be in, and it may not be sustainable forever. At some point, the twin camps of religion and reason may grow too far apart for any school to keep one foot firmly planted in each without looking ridiculous (or doing the splits).

No matter where it falls on the belief spectrum, every religious college may sooner or later have to make a choice: whether to be a proponent of critical thought and discovery, or a purveyor of doctrine — a school, or a church. As science keeps advancing and society keeps evolving, it will get increasingly harder to pretend to be both.

Note:

For an interesting look at the perspectives and challenges of religious colleges, check out God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation are Changing America, by Naomi Schaeffer Riley.

Kevin Wolfman is a a writer and project editor at the Center for Digital Education and the Center for Digital Government, divisions of e.Republic, Inc. He is a former teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is the author of Not Politics: The Student’s Guide to Political Science. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

The post Kevin Wolfman: The Trouble With Religious Colleges appeared first on Education News.

By Kevin Wolfman

Affirmative action, White America’s eternal nemesis, is about to get another close-up.

Kevin Wolfman

In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Grutter v. Bollinger that race-conscious admissions policies at the University of Michigan’s law school, as well as universities nationwide, were acceptable. While the Court rejected the constitutionality of strict “quota” admissions, it reaffirmed that institutions were free to consider race as one factor, among many others, in admissions decisions. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor held that affirmative action “further[ed] a compelling interest in obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”

But this is 2012. O’Connor, the conservative swing vote in the Bollinger case, is long gone from the bench. In her place sits Samuel Alito, a Justice who would be conservative enough to win the upcoming Republican primary in Arizona, were he so inclined. (O’Connor, herself an Arizona native, wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in the desert.) With the replacement of the conservative O’Connor with the arch-conservative Alito, it was only a matter of time before a miffed white applicant denied entrance to her school of choice decided to raise a stink about affirmative action in federal court. So here we are, with the Supreme Court once again poised to possibly throw affirmative action in the trashcan, just nine years after polishing and displaying it proudly on the mantel.

The case against affirmative action has always been, and will always be, the same: Considering race in university admissions is “reverse discrimination”—explicitly racist, and therefore against the law. It’s a fair point. Given that each university has a limited number of slots for new students, the application process is a zero-sum game by definition. Giving a race-centric boost to certain minorities (Asians excluded, of course) automatically decreases the odds of acceptance for white applicants.

On the surface, therefore, this is a pretty cut-and-dried case. Affirmative action decreases whites’ chances for admission due solely due to the color of their skin, so that makes it illegal.

This argument is shallow and incomplete, however. The fact remains that affirmative action, while possibly harmful to white college applicants, presents significant benefits to white college students. O’Connor stated in her Bollinger opinion that a “diverse student body” provides “educational benefits,” presumably to white students as well as those of color. What are these benefits, exactly?

For one, diverse student bodies actually promote higher-level thinking skills. As demonstrated by Stanford education researcher Anthony Lising Antonio, white students who socialize regularly in multiracial peer groups tend to reason more critically about political and social issues than those who hang out in homogenous crowds. Rather than resorting to shallow, emotional appeals, they demonstrate increased “integrative complexity,” weaving multiple perspectives and shades of nuance into their arguments. (Read this article for a more complete discussion of the Antonio study.)

At the same time, college, as a whole, makes students of all colors more tolerant, compassionate, and inclusive. These are universal values that any well-adjusted human being can get behind, and increasing diversity on campus can only accelerate students’ embrace of them. The value of the college experience is not limited to the acquisition of professional skills and a rise in lifetime earning potential. College honestly promotes understanding, acceptance, and unity across racial and ethnic lines. That is not a warm and fuzzy liberal talking point, but an established scientific fact. White students benefit significantly from the experience of living and learning alongside students of color—and vice versa.

These are just a couple of the “educational benefits” cited by Justice O’Connor in 2003, and they still exist in 2012.

Of course, even if opponents of race-conscious admissions accept the fact that diversity does help make white students become better critical thinkers, more tolerant citizens, and more compassionate human beings, they are likely to fall back on this position: In the end, the minority applicants who get accepted to college through affirmative action programs just don’t “deserve” their spots. Because affirmative action admits often have relatively lower grade point averages and/or standardized test scores than their peers, critics claim that they do not rightfully “earn” their positions on campus.

This would be a valid argument if grade point averages and test scores were universally reliable measures of past performance, current aptitude, and future potential. They are most assuredly not—for many reasons, which will be discussed in a future article. For now, it will suffice to state that academic “merit” cannot be reliably measured solely with GPAs and SATs.

Do a few white applicants lose out a spot in their college of choice due to affirmative action policies? Yes. But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of colleges and universities in this country that provide both a quality education and an attractive lifestyle. As journalist and Yale grad Alexandra Robbins persuasively illustrates in her book The Overachievers, when it comes to future earnings and career advancement, where one attends college matters much less than how well one performs in college academically.

Among other things, Robbins cites a study that followed the careers of two groups of Harvard applicants. The first group’s students were admitted to Harvard and enrolled in the school. The second group’s students were admitted to Harvard but chose to enroll elsewhere, usually at a less prestigious place (it’s hard to find anywhere as prestigious as Harvard). Years later, the students in the second group were just as professionally successful as the students in the first group. The lesson? If you are “qualified” for a particular school, you are probably going to end up just as well off as the students at that school, whether or not you actually attend that school yourself.

White America’s never-ending hissy fit over affirmative action may be just one more symptom of our society’s unhealthy obsession with so-called “top” colleges. Students (and parents, of course) have been brainwashed by self-interested, for-profit entities like The Princeton Review, Kaplan, and U.S. News and World Report into believing that a rejection from a college perceived as “elite” will seriously damage an applicant’s odds of future success. As Robbins demonstrated, however, this is simply untrue.

The intellectual and social benefits of campus diversity, for students both white and non-white, are clear. Affirmative action, in turn, bolsters these benefits by diversifying the college environment. The white applicants who miss out on attending their first-choice schools due to affirmative action policies will, in all likelihood, not suffer any real long-term negative effects—they are still perfectly “qualified,” after all. So, is the principle of “race-blind” admissions worth the practical decreases in intellectual strength and social cohesiveness that would result?

If the Supreme Court declares “yes,” it won’t just be the minorities that suffer.

Kevin Wolfman is a teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is the author of Not Politics: The Student’s Guide to Political Science. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

The post Kevin Wolfman: The White Case for Affirmative Action appeared first on Education News.

Last month, we discussed how the complexity of modern research techniques, combined with a general lack of written communications skills, prevents many important and interesting social-science research findings from ever reaching a non-academic audience. Today’s research methods—especially “quant” methods—are so technical, and the researchers themselves so often unable to explain their work legibly to outsiders, that much of the social sciences’ knowledge never escapes the narrow confines of the ivory tower. This is only half the reason why social science research is “anti-social,” however. The disappointing truth is that even those researchers who do possess the skills to “translate” their findings to a wide audience are frequently unwilling to do so.

Kevin Wolfman

Why? In much of academia, including the social sciences, there is zero professional incentive for researchers to write for the “average” person, or use their knowledge to educate the public and advance the common good.

The basis of academic employment is the tenure system. After earning a PhD and seizing a coveted assistant professor position at a 4-year college or university, newly minted researchers spend the first five or so years of their careers pursuing tenure—the holy grail of life in the ivory tower. During these first years, new faculty members are under considerable pressure to publish as much work as possible in their fields’ leading peer-reviewed journals. Since it can take up to eighteen months for a submitted research paper to appear in a journal, assistant professors will often be working on several papers at any given time. Add the responsibility of teaching on top of this pressure-cooker, and life as a new researcher can be just as stressful as life in graduate school.

The strain is most pronounced at large research universities, known as “R-1” schools. Assistant professors at R-1 schools are often expected to publish five or more papers in the first few years of their careers—a borderline ridiculous pace, given the molasses-slow peer review process employed by all the respectable journals. During “tenure review,” the decision of whether or not to award tenure is often based solely on the quantity and perceived quality of the researcher’s work. (Teaching ability rarely plays a significant role.) Figurative (or literal) points are awarded for each published piece of work, weighted by the “prestige” of the journal in which each piece appeared—more points for a piece published in a journal perceived as elite, and fewer points for one published in a perceived second-tier journal. This usually holds true even when the actual quality of the two papers is indistinguishable.

Most importantly for our discussion, a piece only “counts” during tenure review if it appeared in one of these peer-reviewed journals. There are often no points awarded to pieces published in “commercial” places. Feature articles in widely read and respected periodicals TIME and The Economist, high-profile editorials in national newspapers like The Washington Post, commercially printed books like Freakonomics that crash the New York Times best-seller list and become cultural phenomena… none of these will typically count for much, if at all. A paper that is published in the prestigious journal Abstract Concepts Quarterly, and read by a few hundred fellow researchers, generally carries more weight in academia than a hardcover that is published by Random House and read by millions.

In other words, for researchers pursuing the holy grail of tenure, there is simply no reason to write anything for a non-academic audience. The system actually punishesthose who do. After all, if you spend your time penning a mass-market Random House book instead of revising and resubmitting that paper for Abstract Concepts Quarterly, well, you must not want tenure very much, right? Perhaps the department should go in a different direction.

But what about all the years after tenure? Won’t researchers be much more eager to write for a non-academic audience once their jobs are secure? Sadly, this rarely happens.

Tenure was originally created to shield researchers from the political and institutional backlash that results from conducting and publicizing controversial or otherwise “unwelcome” research. It gives researchers the freedom to pursue truth when the powers-that-be would prefer the truth to remain hidden. Tenure is a tool designed to help researchers reach the goal of creating new knowledge and using that knowledge to influence opinions and change the world for the better, politics and power be damned.

Unfortunately, in much of academia, including the social sciences, tenure is not looked at as a tool for reaching a goal. It has become the goal itself. Does everyone have this attitude? Of course not. But far too many do. And this is arguably the fault of the schools and departments that use tenure as a carrot, dangling it in front of young researchers as a way to get them to publish lots of peer-reviewed papers in the school’s name. Doing so bolsters the school’s prestige—and earns it more funding, and possibly higher U.S. News rankings, as a result. At the same time, though, the practice effectively warps the researcher’s perspective and can dull any sense of civic responsibility or ambition he or she may previously have possessed. The focus becomes winning tenure, not educating society or improving the world.

No wonder so many newly tenured faculty members just want to sit back and relax. They have spent the last decade or more learning that tenure is the light at the end of the tunnel, instead of the torch that makes the journey through the tunnel easier.

Tenure is supposed to be a tool for change, not self-aggrandizement. The schools and departments that use the promise of its attainment like a carrot (and the threat of its denial like a stick), and fuel this system to benefit themselves at the expense of educating the public, are doing both researchers and society a grave disservice. People in the “real world” need—and want—the insight that social science research can provide. And researchers should be encouraged and trained to use their knowledge for public good, not just private comfort.

Bemoaning the ignorance of the general population is somewhat of a pastime in academic circles. Perhaps it is time for academia to take some more responsibility for this knowledge deficit. Should researchers concern themselves primarily with their personal job security, their institution’s reputation, and the theoretical debates of their subject areas? Or might they have an obligation to use their expertise to help enlighten and advance society as a whole?

Kevin Wolfman is a teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is currently writing a book about the relationship between higher education and political beliefs. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

The post Kevin Wolfman: Why Social Science Research is Anti-Social, Pt. II appeared first on Education News.

The next time you find yourself in a bookstore (or on Amazon.com), browse the titles in the Politics and Government section. You will doubtless find several memoirs and partisan rallying cries written by current and former politicians, a handful of thoughtful tracts penned by long-deceased theorists, and more angry screeds than composed by “commentators” than you can count. But rare is the book on politics that is written by a person with arguably more fundamental knowledge and insight on the subject that any other: an actual political scientist.

Kevin Wolfman

Surprisingly enough, this dearth of educated material is largely by design. Political scientists—along with researchers in many other social science fields—almost never write popular (non-peer reviewed) books and articles that have positions and conclusions rooted in concrete research and data. As a result, the self-congratulating politicians and the legions of abrasive “commentators” have a near-monopoly on the nation’s published discourse. Given that the American public, as a whole, is infamously uninformed about political and social issues, the silence of social science is deafening.

So, this begs the question: Why, exactly, is social science research so “anti-social” — absent from the bookstores, Internet sites, and magazine pages frequented by so many people who could desperately use its insight?

Part of the answer may lie in the nature of graduate school. The PhD, of course, is a research-oriented degree. Naturally, then, graduate programs stress the acquisition of expert skills in many different forms of research. These include case studies and other so-called “small-n” methods, which examine anywhere from one to a handful of different subjects, to the “large-n” methods that examine hundreds, or even thousands, of subjects at the same time. These large-n methods are conducted using advanced mathematics, complex statistical models, and highly technical computer programming techniques. In recent years, more and more focus has been shifted toward the latter style, known as quantitative research. “Quant,” as it is known, has many advantages, chief among them the potential to pinpoint hidden correlations and connections within data that the human mind simply cannot uncover on its own. In many social science graduate programs, therefore, instruction has become heavily weighted toward “quant.”

However, quant has an obvious downside: it is simply way too complicated for average person to wrap his or her mind around. The tools and terms that quantitative researchers throw around like Halloween candy—regression, maximum likelihood estimation (MLE), logit and probit modeling, heteroskedasticity (“hetero-what?”), and more—are difficult for many “normal” people to pronounce, never mind understand. Modern-day research has a language of its own. Like any language, then, it needs to be translated by a native speaker for its content to be clearly relayed to the non-fluent public. The dense, technical jargon must be simplified or stripped away entirely, enabling the consumer to focus on the research’s basic meaning and conclusions.

The problem is that when it comes to social science research—quant and “qual” alike—skilled translators are in very short supply.

For all the intensive research instruction it offers, graduate school often provides little or no formal training in writing. Grad students will always take several classes on research methods (quantitative and/or qualitative), but often zero classes on how to communicate the results of their research. Writing instruction, if it exists at all, is generally informal, limited to a few stolen minutes here and there with a faculty advisor (who probably never received any real writing instruction of his or her own.) The result of this imbalance between research and writing is that, by the time dissertations have been defended and degrees conferred, many newly minted PhDs have a wealth of interesting, possibly even groundbreaking, knowledge ready to share with the world… and no ability to convey it effectively to a non-academic audience.

Social science research, therefore, often remains stuck in the all-too-real academic “bubble.” Reams of insight about the sociopolitical world remain forever untapped, doomed to obscurity in peer-reviewed journals read by no more than a few subject-area specialists—let alone everyday Americans who don’t have advanced degrees. And academia can’t honestly blame this unfortunate situation on a lack of public demand for its work. The marketplace success of books like Outliers and Freakonomics has clearly proven that research-based publications can be wildly popular—if they are written in a clear, engaging way. (Tellingly, the author of Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell, is a journalist, while economist Dr. Steven Levitt wrote Freakonomics with the help of Stephen J. Dubner — another journalist.)

In response to this criticism, graduate programs may argue that their job to teach students how to conduct research, not how to describe research to an uneducated consumer. This is a fair point; after all, there are only so many hours in the day, and grad schools have a ton of subject material to cover. It stands to reason that research is the major focus of program whose end result is a research degree.

Should it be the sole focus, though?

There is no denying that research is incredibly important. However, given the predominance of highly technical “quant” methods in the social sciences today, does it not make sense for graduate programs to focus not just on the learning of these methods, but also on the communication of the information those methods help to discover? Conceivably, influential figures in the “real world”—politicians, businessmen, activists, voters—could use that knowledge to inform themselves and move society in a positive direction, if only they knew about it. Might researchers have some responsibility tell people outside their own tiny professional circle about their findings, if those findings could be used to change world for the better?

Or, to put it more bluntly: What is the point of conducting research if nobody hears about it? Imagine if Copernicus, after discovering the Earth revolved around the Sun, had simply scribbled that little factoid in his diary and kept his mouth shut. How much longer would it have taken for the public’s impression of the solar system to match up with reality? For how long would society’s slow and unsteady march toward enlightenment have been stunted?

As it stands, social science research too often remains stuck in the “bubble,” removed from popular consumption by a language barrier of its practitioners’ own creation. Being published in a prestigious journal like The American Sociological Review or The American Journal of Political Science can make a researcher’s career—but it does little, on its own, to impact the world. Social scientists cannot continue to rely on the odd interested journalist to “translate” their work. For social science research to become as relevant in society as it should be, the social scientists must cut out the middlemen and learn to speak their own mind.

Kevin Wolfman is a teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is currently writing a book about the relationship between higher education and political beliefs. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

The post Kevin Wolfman: Why Social Science Research is Anti-Social, Pt. I appeared first on Education News.

Kevin Wolfman

This is a depressingly shallow perspective.

It is true that in today’s America, the monetary value of a college education is debatable—particularly if one majors in the humanities or liberal arts. Employers are looking for candidates with “hard skills,” the kind that graduates who lack specialized technical or business training often do not possess. Employers are also looking for experience, which almost no graduates posses. Many newly minted grads have detailed knowledge of the historical events leading up to the American Revolution, or are well-versed in the social inequities that inspired A Tale of Two Cities—but can they make rapid calculations in Microsoft Excel? Even better, do they have three to five years’ experience making rapid calculations in Microsoft Excel, while answering a telephone? If not, sorry—their degree is deemed to be all but worthless in the “real world.”

Or is it?

Decades of research have proven that the value of a college education goes far beyond the acquisition of “hard skills” and the increase in lifetime earning capacity. Higher learning may or may not always guarantee fatter paycheck. On the other hand, it does turn the people earning those paychecks into much more intellectual, engaged, and compassionate members of society than they would be otherwise.

For example: As a group, people with a college education are more supportive of the right to free speech and public assembly, even if they personally disagree with the positions of the speakers. They are more accepting of the idea of a female president, as well as being more committed to gender equality in general. They consume more news, and as a result are more informed about current events. They are more knowledgeable about the political process. They are less approving of the use of violence to achieve political and social ends, by governments and citizen groups alike.

Speaking of politics, they are more skilled at articulating and defending their political beliefs in sophisticated and factually sound ways, rather than resorting to half-baked sound bites and unsupported “gut feelings” to back up their positions. They are more likely to vote and be politically active in general. They are more ideologically consistent, meaning they are less likely to be swayed or duped by the disingenuous spin and outright lies that dominate today’s cable news outlets and anonymous Internet forums. And they are less supportive of both authoritarianism and dogmatic thinking.

As for personal values, college-educated Americans are more aware of the needs, perspectives, and feelings of others. They are more willing to associate with and befriend people outside their own ethnic group. They are more altruistic. They are also less self-centered, less racist, and less homophobic.

The list of virtues goes on and on. Today’s 22 year-olds with bachelor’s degrees may or may not make significantly more money during their career than the 22 year-olds without them—time will tell. That said, they will almost certainly be more informed, engaged, and responsible citizens. Which is better for the future of our country: an educated burger-flipper, or an ignorant one? Keep in mind that, at some point, both are likely to have children.

Those who reduce the value of college to a dollar amount are doing the country a grave disservice. Yes, in the “real world” you have to use Excel often than you have to quote Shakespeare or write term papers on the dynamics of nuclear deterrence. But you also vote in the “real world,” live alongside other people in the “real world,” resolve disputes in the “real world,” and act as a role model for your kids in the “real world.”

Yes, money is important—in the end, it does make the world go ‘round. You can’t quote Shakespeare if you starve. However, even if a college degree did not guarantee the average graduate a single extra dime, there can be no doubt about its ultimate worth to both the graduate and society. If everybody went to college, the financial benefit of a college education would absolutely decrease. At the same time, though, America would likely be much smarter, more tolerant, and more peaceful. Those values will never show up on a spreadsheet, but it takes a shallow mind to argue they are not “worth it.”

Kevin Wolfman is a teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is currently writing a book about the relationship between higher education and political beliefs. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

References

Antonio, Anthony Lising; Chang, Mitchell J.; Hakuta, Kenji; Kenny, David A.; Levin, Shana; and Milem, Jeffrey F. 2004. “Effects of Racial Diversity on Complex Thinking in College Students.” Psychological Science 15(8): 507-510.

Bobo, L., and Licari, F.C. 1989. “Education and political tolerance: Testing the effects of cognitive sophistication and target group affect.” Public Opinion Quarterly 53: 285-308.

Edelstein, Alex. 1962. “Since Bennington: Evidence of Change in Student Political Behavior.” Public Opinion Quarterly 26(4): 564-577.

Hall, Robert; Rodeghier, Mark; and Useem, Brett. 1986. “Effects of education on attitude to protest.” American Sociological Review 51: 564-573.

Hello, Evelyn; Scheepers, Peer; Vermulst, Ad; and Gerris, Jan R.M. 2004. “Association between Educational Attainment and Ethnic Distance in Young Adults: Socialization by Schools or Parents?” Acta Sociologica47(3): 253-275.

Schreiber, E.M. 1978. “Education and change in American opinions on a woman for president.” Public Opinion Quarterly 42: 171-182.

Pascarella, E.T., and Terenzini, P.T. How College Affects Students, Volume 2: A Third Decade of Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

The post Kevin Wolfman: Why College is Always ‘Worth It’ appeared first on Education News.

Kevin Wolfman

Throughout their entire childhood, members of Generation Y were continually assured by the nation’s political and financial leaders that if they worked hard, stayed in school, and bought into the system, their efforts would earn them a solid job and the key to the front door of the middle class—or, at the very least, a fair shot at grabbing the key. Now, those same leaders appear to have rescinded their promise at the last minute, unwilling to sacrifice a small portion of their own wealth and power to help follow through on their assurances. As a result, many of America’s educated young adults feel like the victims of a historic bait-and-switch.

And many of them are very angry about it—angry enough to take to the streets and endure handcuffs and possible jail time. If nothing else, the young participants of Occupy Wall Street are making a lot of proud, ex-activist Baby Boomers—who have long lamented the younger generation’s social apathy and political indifference—eat a healthy portion of crow.

That said, why does this kind of event not happen more often? Why do people—especially young, college-educated people—step out and protest at some times, while staying inside during others? What is so appealing to them about Occupy Wall Street?

Way back in 1986, researchers Robert Hall, Mark Rodeghier, and Brett Useem co-authored a paper that helps answer these present-day questions. Published in the American Sociological Review, their study looked at how a person’s education level affected his or her attitude toward different kinds of protest movements.

First, the researchers found that educated people, in general, are more sympathetic than others toward protests and protesters. Statistically speaking, education is positively correlated with a commitment to civil liberties. As a group, therefore, educated people are more likely than others to view any given protest as legitimate, no matter what the exact subject of the protest is. They may strongly disagree with the protesters’ goals, but they will still embrace their right to protest in the first place.

Secondly, the researchers discovered that education decreases support for protest-related violence. This goes for violence perpetrated by both the protesters and the authorities monitoring and controlling them—police officers, military personnel, and other state-loyal entities. Even when they agree with the aims of the protesters, educated people are less tolerant of violence as a method of effecting political and social change. Likewise, they also are less approving of violence as a way to control or stop protests.

Now, here is where things get interesting.

Lastly, the researchers found that education has a socioeconomic “identification effect” on protest attitudes: Generally speaking, education increases support for “white-collar” protests and protesters, while at the same time decreasing support for blue-collar protests and protesters. In other words, people with a college education are more supportive of protests that concern middle- and upper-class issues, but less supportive of those that champion working- and lower-class causes.

Why? Simple self-interest. Education has historically been a vehicle that advances a person’s socioeconomic position, often from the working class to the middle or upper class. As a result, the person learns to identify more with white-collar grievances of his present than the blue-collar grievances of his past.

So, is Occupy Wall Street a blue-collar or a white-collar protest? Arguably, it is both. High unemployment and underemployment, a volatile stock market, and other economic ills have combined to effectively blur the lines between America’s working and middle classes. Nobody’s economic position is truly safe, regardless of how they dress for work. In the grand scheme of things, white-collar accountants and engineers ultimately have little more job security than blue-collar assembly line workers.

This eroding class distinction could be what makes Occupy Wall Street so attractive a movement to the young and educated. Due to the lack quality entry-level employment and the stress of skyrocketing student debt, they are generally poor and financially unstable, causing them to identify with traditional blue-collar grievances—the education “vehicle” has failed to drive them up the socioeconomic ladder. At the same time, they have spent years in college (and often graduate school), and therefore have high professional and financial ambitions—causing them to identify with white-collar grievances, too.

It is a perfect storm of dissatisfaction. And Occupy Wall Street—with its emphases ranging from capitalist greed and corruption, to environmental protection, to Afghanistan—sits right in the eye of the hurricane.

Movements that appeal to both “collars” are rare. The Baby Boomers had one: the Vietnam War. Unlike the current wars in the Middle East, Vietnam utilized the draft, making young people from across the socioeconomic spectrum vulnerable to the conflict. While those with money and connections could, and often did, squirm their way out of their service obligations (or into an Air National Guard unit, at the very least), the bottom line remained: anyone’s number could be up next. This widespread vulnerability energized young people of all economic stripes, and made campus protests a significant (if often misrepresented and over-dramatized) element of the anti-war movement. Since then, however, there has been little compelling reason for young, educated people from different economic backgrounds to come together and make a large impact through protest.

New and unproven, Occupy Wall Street may or may not have the potential to effect change on a significant scale. Unlike Vietnam, lives are not directly at stake. But livelihoods certainly are. And Occupy Wall Street does encompass many issues that large majorities of Generation Y identify with, including fear over the disappearance of the middle class, anger over high unemployment and endemic financial insecurity, frustration over America’s continued Middle East military presence, and concern over steady environmental degradation.

For now, the movement is growing. Time will tell if its idealistic voices become both loud and numerous enough to actually make the powers-that-be stop and listen.

Kevin Wolfman is a teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is currently writing a book about the relationship between higher education and political beliefs. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

References

Hall, Robert; Rodeghier, Mark; Useem, Brett. 1986. “Effects of Education on Attitude to Protest.” American Sociological Review 51: 564-573.

The post Kevin Wolfman: Why Students are ‘Occupying’ Wall Street appeared first on Education News.

Kevin Wolfman

Affirmative action is most often discussed in the context of the college admissions process. Should students from certain minority backgrounds receive special consideration from admissions committees, in light of the unique challenges they face growing up in a historically (and presently) discriminatory society? Or is such consideration itself racially discriminatory against white students, and therefore immoral (if not illegal)?

The focus of both supporters and opponents of affirmative action has been relentlessly narrow: on how it helps minorities, and how it hurts whites. As a result, the debate has grown frustratingly stale over time. Both sides keep talking fast and furiously, but in circles. So it might be refreshing to examine affirmative action from a fresh angle, and ask a new, intriguing question—one long lost and/or ignored in the issue’s emotionally charged crossfire.

Does affirmative action help white students, too?

In the early 2000s, a research team headed by Stanford’s Dr. Anthony Lising Antonio conducted a study on the impact of racial diversity in college. The researchers recruited a pool of undergraduate volunteers, and divided these volunteers into several different discussion groups. Once in the groups, which were moderated by research assistants, each volunteer was asked to both state and justify their opinions on a few different important social issues. Simple enough—opinion research like this has been around almost as long as politics itself, in one form or another.

In this particular study, however, there was an interesting twist. In some of the groups, all the participants were white. But in some of the other groups, all the participants were white except for one. Antonio’s team wanted to know what kind of impact, if any, the presence of a minority participant would have on the white’s responses. Keep in mind that the subjects being discussed were social issues, which often have a clear and contentious racial divide. Would the white participants speak more delicately, even censor themselves? Perhaps decline to answer entirely?

None of the above, as it turned out. Here’s what actually happened: When asked, the white students in the “diverse” groups responded to the questions in more intellectually sophisticated ways than those in the all-white groups. They did a better job at both integrating outside perspectives into their arguments—in other words, giving the “other side” credit for valid points, where such credit was due—and at avoiding the tendency to base their opinions on simplistic, “evaluative” reasoning. They went into greater depth in their responses, pulling from multiple sources and experiences to construct more well-rounded argument. Overall, the whites in the diverse groups demonstrated a greater acknowledgement and understanding of the “trade-offs among perspectives and solutions” in the social issues being discussed, compared to those in the all-white groups. This difference was fairly small, but clear.

Note that the presence of a racial minority did not change the white students’ opinions. It did, however, compel them to formulate and back up their opinions in more comprehensive, intellectually solid ways.

Discerning observers will point to an obvious flaw in this experiment: it only measured the students’ reasoning skills at one specific point in time, in a single (and highly artificial) situation. Luckily, then, Antonio and his team went one crucial step further.

After the discussion groups dissolved, each volunteer was given the opportunity to elaborate on their opinions by writing a short essay. They were also asked some questions, one of which concerned the racial composition of their friendship group—the collection of peers they socialized with regularly, outside the classroom. How might the response impact of a racially mixed friendship group—with whom unmonitored interaction was long-term, casual, and unmonitored—compare with the impact of a racially mixed discussion group, with whom interaction was moderated, regimented, and fleeting?

Analyzing the essays, the researchers found that the students whose written arguments were the most intellectually sophisticated were also, on average, the ones who claimed membership in a diverse friendship group. And this time, the difference was both clear and substantial. As a group, the responses of the white students who associated the most frequently and consistently with non-white students easily scored the highest in “Integrative Complexity”—the researchers’ measure of a response’s intellectual sophistication.

What does this mean? It means that concerted efforts to increase racial diversity on campus may also encourage the development of a student body that thinks more critically and deeply about social and political issues. Diversity does not necessarily change white students’ positions on the issues—there is no indoctrinating going on here—but it does, apparently, compel them to support their positions using greater levels of nuance and sophistication. By the same token, racial diversity seems to discourage the urge to fall back on simplistic, “evaluative” arguments that don’t stand up well to reason and persistent scrutiny.

With that in mind, one implication of this study’s findings is that affirmative action, discriminatory or not, may in fact help white students—at least once the admissions process wraps up and classes commence. Systematic efforts to bring more racial minorities to campus—especially ones whose life experiences are markedly different than those of the average white student—might unexpectedly result in a more intellectually robust white student population.

In the end, of course, the question of whether or not it is “right” to use race as a factor in college admissions still lingers. That debate will doubtless rage on, as charged as ever, for the foreseeable future. But steadfast opponents of race-conscious admissions policies should at least be willing to recognize that, whether ultimately “right” or “wrong,” such policies could be having a positive impact on the intellectual development of the white students whose rights they are trying to protect. If affirmative action is viewed as just one more cloud hanging over the world of higher education, maybe this is the silver lining.

Kevin is a teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is currently writing a book about the relationship between higher education and political beliefs. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

References

Antonio, Anthony Lising; Chang, Mitchell J.; Hakuta, Kenji; Kenny, David A.; Levin, Shana; and Milem, Jeffrey F. 2004. “Effects of Racial Diversity on Complex Thinking in College Students.” Psychological Science 15(8): 507-510.

The post Kevin Wolfman: Affirmative Action Helps White Students Think appeared first on Education News.

By Kevin Wolfman, M.A.

How “liberal” is college, really?

In his 2009 book One Party Classroom: How Radical Professors At America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and Undermine our Democracy, political critic David Horowitz excoriates the American higher education system, claiming that “indoctrination” of college students into radical left-wing ideology is widespread, purposeful, and insidious. “Curricula are designed not to educate students in critical thinking,” Horowitz writes,  “but to instill doctrines that are ‘politically correct’ … a growing number of activist instructors routinely present their students with only one side of controversial issues in an effort to convert them to a sectarian perspective.”

Kevin Wolfman

Horowitz’s viewpoint is far from uncommon on America’s political right. Indeed, it is all but an article of faith in conservative circles that colleges and universities are actively liberalizing their students to promote the left-wing agendas of activist professors and administrations. Professional studies, however, show that this is incorrect—a forgivable misunderstanding at best, and a purposeful distortion of reality at worst.

Horowitz and his allies are indeed correct in the most basic sense—overall, college education does exert a liberalizing effect. The average college student leaves campus further left on the political spectrum than when he or she arrived. But the actual extent of this movement toward liberalism, and the real forces behind it, are profoundly misunderstood by conservatives and liberals alike. The truth is a bit more complicated, and a lot more interesting.

Before exploring why students’ political attitudes tend to become more liberal, one must first clarify the actual degree of change. Many conservatives believe, like Horowitz, that untold numbers of students are being steered strongly leftward. The data shows that they are quite wrong. Combing through decades of research on the subject of student values, researchers Ernest Pascarella and Patrick Terenzini determined in 2005’s How College Affects Students, Volume 2 that the percentage of college students identifying themselves as “liberal” or “far-left” increases by only about 4 percent from freshman to senior year. What’s more, the group of self-identifying conservatives actually increases as well—by well over four percent. While the group of liberals still grows more in absolute terms (since it is larger to begin with), the fact is that both liberals and conservatives see their ranks swell as a byproduct of the college experience. And additional research on political behavior has shown, on both sides the majority of this increase likely results from students who start their college career as moderates and end up “picking a team” at some point between orientation and graduation.

Few conservative students ever become liberals during college, and vice versa. Higher education’s political influence may be less one of liberalization and more one ofpolarization, as centrist students gradually drift to one side of the spectrum or the other. Conservatives agitated over the idea of pervasive university radicalism are frothing at the mouth over nothing. Hard, statistical evidence pointing to a widespread “indoctrination” of college students into liberal thought simply does not exist.

As for the supposed dominance of liberal professors in academia, particularly in the social sciences and humanities: When it comes to the impact on students’ politics, the imbalance is misleading. While it is true that the vast majority of professors in these areas are indeed liberal, this well-documented ideological dominance actually has relatively little effect on student attitudes. Studies show that the influence of faculty in shaping students’ political views is modest at best.

Research has identified two alternative factors that do, in fact, exert an overall liberal effect on the political views of students.

The first factor is cognitive development. During college, the average student becomes more appreciative of nuance and complexity, more tolerant of ambiguity, less accepting of ideological dogmatism, and, to quote social scientist Alex Edelstein, “attach[es] more value to intellectual processes.” In other words, students get smarter.  Simplistic arguments and black-white views of the world—the kinds that unfortunately seem to flourish in the Palinated version of modern American conservatism—tend not to appeal to those lucky enough to benefit from years of post-secondary intellectual training.

The second factor is socialization—but not at the hands of activist faculty. The real socializing influence on college campuses, rather, is the peer group. College brings students from all backgrounds together and makes them sleep, work, and socialize alongside each other.  This heterogeneous environment encourages students to re-evaluate the preconceptions and value systems they brought with them to campus as they are confronted on a daily basis with perspectives and knowledge bases different from their own, often for the very first time.

Far from being exposed to a single, “sectarian” worldview, college students gain exposure to a myriad of worldviews, and come to realize that their own perspective is not the sole legitimate one. An experimental study led by Stanford’s Anthony Lising Antonio discovered that college students whose peer groups are racially diverse are more likely to answer questions about their political beliefs by using greater detail, nuance, and intellectual complexity. Their exposure to the viewpoints of diverse peer group members actually compels them to think more deeply about political and social issues, shunning black-and-white “evaluative” reasoning in favor of a more complete “recognition of the trade-offs among [various] perspectives and solutions.”

Many conservatives might disparagingly characterize this socialization process as a drift toward moral relativism.  It is actually a drift toward reality—not necessarily an embrace of liberalism, but a rejection of the half-baked brand of thought championed by the Becks and Bachmanns currently holding sway over the discourse of America’s political right.

The perception of higher education as a leftist breeding ground is baseless. College does not turn conservatives—or moderates and liberals, for that matter—into liberal lemmings. The wild-eyed, straggly-bearded professor who rages about the evils of capitalism and the virtues of command economics and communal living, transforming student bodies into raving leftist hordes in the process, is by and large a myth—perhaps one that is perpetuated to de-legitimize any scholarly inquiry that contradicts long-standing conservative political and religious assumptions. Make no mistake, radical professors do exist. But the minimal amount of influence they have on their students belies the high degree of attention they receive from activists on the other side of the proverbial aisle.

What benign increase in the ranks of liberal students during college that does occur—roughly 4 percent—is not due to “indoctrination” at the hands of tenured socialists and radicals. It is, rather, a result of intellectual maturation combined with a stimulating collegiate social life that shapes and strengthens the values of equality and acceptance. If the lecture halls of America’s universities are “one-party classrooms,” as Horowitz says, maybe it’s because conservatism has forgotten that school is in session.

Kevin is a teacher and holds a Masters degree in political science from the University of California at Davis. He is currently writing a book about the relationship between higher education and political beliefs. Follow him on Twitter at @kevinwolfman.

References

Antonio, Anthony Lising; Chang, Mitchell J.; Hakuta, Kenji; Kenny, David A.; Levin,   Shana; and Milem, Jeffrey F. 2004. “Effects of Racial Diversity on Complex  Thinking in College Students.” Psychological Science 15(8): 507-510.

Dey, Eric L. 1996. “Undergraduate Political Attitudes: An Examination of Peer, Faculty,  and Social Influences.” Research in Higher Education 37(5): 535-554.

Dey, Eric L. 1997. “Undergraduate Political Attitudes: Peer Influence in Changing Social  Contexts.” The Journal of Higher Education 68(4): 398-413.

Edelstein, Alex. 1962. “Since Bennington: Evidence of Change in Student Political  Behavior.” Public Opinion Quarterly 26(4): 564-577.
George, David L., and Medler, Jerry F. “College Faculty as an  Inconsequential Agent of  Political Socialization.” Available online.

Horowitz, David, and Laksin, Jacob. One-Party Classroom: How Radical      Professors at America’s Top Colleges Indoctrinate Students and      Undermine our Democracy. New York: Crown Forum, 2009.

Newcomb, Theodore M. Personality and Social Change: Attitude Formation in a Student  Community. New York: Dryden, 1943.

Pascarella, E.T., and Terenzini, P.T. How College Affects Students, Volume 2: A Third  Decade of Research. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2005.

The post Kevin Wolfman: Is College Really That Liberal? appeared first on Education News.