The American Association of University Professors recently commissioned a public opinion survey with the support of the Spencer Foundation and Harvard University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. One thousand Americans aged 18 and older were chosen at random to participate; and the findings have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percent. The focus of the survey is on public perceptions of political bias in the academy, but we also ask about the public’s views on tenure, academic freedom, and on higher education more generally.
The survey shows that nearly 90 percent of the public — across all age groups, party identification, gender, ideology, religion, ethnicity, and state location — have a lot or some confidence in higher education, ahead of the public confidence levels in organized religion, the White House, and the press, trailing only the public’s confidence in the military. An equal percentage of the public highly ranks the occupation prestige of college or university professors, well ahead that of lawyers and stockbrokers, a bit ahead of elementary school teachers, and only behind physicians. Most Americans believe “political bias in the classroom” should be of less concern than the high cost of college, binge drinking, and low educational standards. Almost 77 percent of all Americans agree that tenure is a good way to reward accomplished professors and 70 percent agree that tenure is essential to the faculty’s freedom to teach, research, and write without
concern. About 80 percent of the public is opposed to government control over what is taught in the classroom or what faculty research. And, 71.5 percent of those polled say that most professors are respectful when students voice political opinions different from the professor’s.
Carrol Cox wrote:
> I've only glanced at few lines in a few of the posts in this thread, the
> very subject line pissing me off and evoking for me the really
> disgusting professor-baiting of several people on the list who I
> otherwise respect.
> Professor baiting, it occurred t ome while half-dozing as Jan & I were
> driving back to Bloomington today, is a sort of twisted intellectual
> elitism, a huge over-valuation of "intelligence" as such. The hidden
> premise is that any smart person should know THE TRUTH, and if a smart
> person doesn't know THE TRUTH (The Truth according to the prof-baiter
> that is) then that person must be a deliberate fraud. Let me use a word
> I usually condemn: such baiting of The Academy manifests a seed of
> fascism in the baiter, a half-hiden lust for The Absolute Truth and The
> Absolute Good which can only be achieved throug Plato's Philosopher
> King, The Modern Caudillo. College Professsors, even tenured Full
> Professors, let alone the overwhelming majority of adjuncts or those on
> tenure tracks which will never lead to tenure, have as much right to be
> ignorant, angry, anxious, jealous,penny-pinching, politically
> indifferent, as Walmart clerks, systems analysts, copy editors,
> heavy-equipment operators, elementary school janitors, meter-maids,
> clerk-typists, auto mechanics, automotive engineers, postal clerks,
> firefighters, gearshaver operatives, coal miners, or mens-department
> managers. It is just another fucking way to earn a living, and until the
> carpers can build a left movement that can bring some freedom to the
> u.s. school system, they should shut their mouths about how terrible or
> mooderate or what-hav-you college professors are. It's a form of
> scabbing.
> Carrol
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