No Bias Facing Conservative Students?

News Type: Event — Seeded on Sun Apr 9, 2006 7:37 PM EDT

Article Source: Ars Technica

education, college, conservative, liberal, university, bias, sociology, poltics, grades, unlv, assessment, liberal-arts

Markus Kemmelmeier, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Nevada at Reno, set out to ask how political orientation affects a student's college performance. In a study entitled "What's in a Grade? Academic Success and Political Orientation", Kemmelmeier publishes some interesting results.

Previous studies have suggested that conservative students perform slightly worse than other students in certain liberal arts and "social science" courses, such as anthropology. Kemmelmeier's study doesn't overturn this, but it does shed some light on the cause. Rather than take up the commonplace argument that the liberal professors are punishing their conservative students, Kemmelmeier looks to another root cause: the students themselves.

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Adam Hobson

I just went on over to check on your column after reading your posts here, and I found this. This is a pretty interesting seed. I was an outspoken conservative at a very liberal liberal arts colleges. While certain Professors let liberal-biased comments slip, some more often than others, and others not at all, I never felt that any of the professors respecting me any less, or that my positions adversely affected my grades at all. For the most part it just led to some interesting classroom discussions, especially when I called out one professor for claiming that the Constitution was a "living document" for a communication and law class (which is where I got most of my knowledge used in the other thread I mentioned.) without stating the opposing position. I think that was done more in ignorance than in bias, but again the debate that came after was enjoyable. I love free speech.

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1 vote

#1 - Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:09 AM EDT

{"commentId":93682,"authorDomain":"vincitveritas"}

Brooks Travis

While I would not consider myself a conservative, my experience has been very similar to yours. Often the most productive and informative courses are those in which the students and faculty passionately disagree but are both(all) able to intelligently debate their respective views. I have yet to encounter a faculty member who graded someone down for disagreeing with them. If anything, the opposite has been true at times (thought not consciously, I think), as some professors actually expect more out of those who actively agree with them.

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#1.1 - Wed Apr 12, 2006 1:52 AM EDT

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BROOKS TRAVIS

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No Bias Facing Conservative Students?

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