[lbo-talk] College Makes Students More Liberal, but Not Smarter About Civics, Study Finds....not really though...

[Bryan Atinsky]

Matthias Wasser wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 9:17 PM, Chuck Grimes <cgrimes at rawbw.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> Get down to the comment 25, Doug1943: ``The people who sponsored this
>> research, the ISI, are indeed a conservative organization, and this
>> should have been mentioned.'' Damned right it should have been.
>>     
>
>
> They did mention it: "an independent group with a tradition-minded view of
> issues..." It should have been in the lede, though, assuming there's
> something newsworthy to the story at all.
>   
Yes, but while they did mention the "tradition-minded" view of the 
center, they more or less took their undefined "civics knowledge" at 
face value in the Chronicle's reporting of the "research" (if you can 
call it that).

That is shoddy reporting.

"Previous surveys have found that, in general, college does not bring 
students up to a high level of civics knowledge. According to the 
institute's 2008 report, 
<http://chronicle.com/article/Most-College-Graduates-Flun/1357/> based 
on a survey of 2,500, people whose highest level of educational 
attainment was a bachelor's degree correctly answered 57 percent of the 
questions, on average. That is three percentage points lower than a 
passing grade, according to the survey's authors."