From Inside Higher Ed. I hope this stays out of politics.
I somehow don’t think this is going to harm Brown in any way, or any Top 20 colleges for that matter.
Seems like if someone does not like campus politics (of any kind), a commuter school where most students go to class and then go home to non-campus-related housing would be the desired kind of school.
I’m sure there are conservative colleges out there that will meet the needs of the political far right. And, I’m sure that those on the political far left rule them out. There are 3,000-odd colleges and universities out there. Surely, students of all beliefs can find a fit for themselves.
The article actually says this.
It also says this:
The student in question ended up at Stanford, but I think the moral of the story here is that you can’t always have it all.
I must have missed it. I thought this thread was about Brown, Yale, Middlebury and other LAC’s mentioned in the OP’s article. I didn’t see Berkeley mentioned in the article.
If we’re talking about miscellaneous bad things around the world, hey, how about a coffee company paying their South American farmers $3/day and live in squalor, yet I bet most of us frequent this coffee company every day and buy a $5 frappucchino.
Let’s not stretch the recent Berkeley protests, one US college campus, into some sort of huge “dangerous liberal” problem everywhere. Berkeley is Berkeley. Always has been. I’ve had alot of friends and relatives attend and graduate Cal over decades without any incident. None.
http://www.thebigsort.com/ continues.
Viewed from a different perspective, most universities are very conservative.
- Students must succeed or fail on their own through their own hard work and test-taking ability. That's a very conservative attitude.
- Fail and you get kicked out. What's more conservative than that?
- Show up for class and do the work, nobody is going to hold your hand. Again very conservative.
- Resources are available to help but you have to figure out what's out there and ask for help on your own. Very conservative.
- Pick your own housing and roommates. Conservative.
- Do what you want on your own time, play, work, etc. Very conservative.
- Don't stick your nose in other people's business and they won't stick their nose in yours - very conservative (ok, just until you realize this is encompassed by the liberal word "tolerance").
- Don't just believe the textbooks, think critically and experiment. Conservative.
- Pay for the privilege of attending. Super conservative.
- Graduate and go get a job and become a productive member of society. Positively Ayn Randian.
Not sure this is any different than parents nixing schools like Georgetown or Notre Dame because they find the religous grounding of those institutions off putting. Pretty sure we are talking about people at the very fringes who likely have bigger problems then getting upset that a world class university concerns itself with halloween costumes, or whether another is opressive because it has crucifixes hanging in classrooms.
That said, if the trends we see in college regarding protests et al continue, it wouldn’t surprise me that eventually we will see some not insignificant self selection. Arguably, this is already happening at places like Mizzou. Obviously, the most selective schools will to a large extent be shielded from this, because of the lack of peer institutions with more “acceptable” cultures. Of course, the question of whether this is a good thing in the context of higher education is a whole different question.
If i had a nickel for every time someone said a school was “off the table” when a protest or other incident happened there, I’d be a wealthy woman.
That said, we all have certain criteria. No Greek life, small classes, whatever. Perceived politics of the student body and/or professors is certainly one for many people.
Middlebury has highest yield in years: http://www.middlebury.edu/newsroom/archive/2017-news/node/547587
“- Don’t just believe the textbooks, think critically and experiment. Conservative”
True.
But when your very liberal professor picks the text book you don’t get a vote to not read it. The current theme for conservative students lately is just “keep a low profile and get out of the class in one piece…”
My son in HS had a very liberal social studies teacher who was great. The joke (even among parents) was always how he TRIED to keep things balanced but once in a while he’d lose it. BUT he really encouraged debate on any subject and never shut down discussion or made someone uncomfortable for expressing their views.
In college son ran into another sort…the liberal (and political) prof who didn’t want to hear anything that they didn’t agree with, who assigned books with only one view. And graded accordingly.
Did son agree? No. Recourse? none.
Advice: Just get out of the class as soon as possible in one piece with a decent grade.
That was only a couple classes (I hope) for son in his college. But I can imagine that if I thought that was the majority of class experience for my kid that I certainly would not want them to attend that college.
Yale is too conservative but Pepperdine is not a tip-tier, so Stanford because of its Hoover Institute… LOL, that’s really funny.
Seriously, though, how many Yale and Stanford admitted students whose parents are ultra-conservative enough to afford such a luxurious political decision?
Gee… are you telling me that people who can afford to hire private counselors tend to be conservative and would deter their child from a perceived liberal school?
Non story IMO. This is an extreme minority of students.
My parents didn’t pay for my schooling but they would not have paid a dime to somewhere like Notre Dame,BYU, etc because they are pretty anti-religion. The difference is that no private counselor would’ve heard about it 
ETA: (Off topic)
Classy. I’d like to introduce these people to the hundreds of pictures I’m currently sorting through of real “insane asylums.”
This may not be specifically left or right leaning, since both left and right leaning people can favor this. But the more extreme ones (both left and right) can become rather closed minded. Unfortunately, the latter have become noisier and more dominant in political debate (on and off campus), since their simplistic views are more easily shouted as protest slogans, <140 character social media memes, and/or sound-bites on television.
That would be the libertarian type (though there are both left and right leaning libertarians).
I think it is their prerogative. I also think that if Brown were a good option for the student then they are removing a good option off the table for a reason that is perhaps overblown. I believe most of these incidents get lots of press and a small minority of students can have an oversized impact on the reputation of a school. For the most part students merely want to study, have fun and live their lives. I admit Oberlin would annoy me.
The “Oberline is an Insane Asylum” piece was written in response to the following New Yorker piece on the school. The New Yorker piece was discussed on CC.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/05/30/the-new-activism-of-liberal-arts-colleges
The Inside Higher Ed article focused on conservatives avoiding schools thought to be highly liberal, like Oberlin or Wesleyan, and Brown. The parents in the article did not seem to be hard core religious who would prefer Liberty over a mainstream school, but more centrists who don’t want to support the sort of behavior seen at Yale or Brown in recent years.
On CC, most of the avoidance has been from liberals boycotting schools. Some examples include North Carolina schools because of the bathroom bill, Texas schools because of open carry, or Southern schools in general because they aren’t in a different part of the country. Others avoid religious schools like Georgetown, which are not very religious, so it was somewhat refreshing to see the shoe on the other foot so to speak in the Inside Higher Ed article.
I remember some tiny portion of the CC discussions involving the schools mentioned in the article: One Yale student engaged in a shouting match with a professor while being filmed by a visiting speaker. The video went viral. A few hundred Wesleyan students petitioned the student government to defund the student newspaper. The petition went viral in part because so many Wesleyan alumni are in the communications and media business. I honestly don’t remember what the rap was against Brown. These things seem to linger longer in the minds of adults than they do with their children.
The following documentary summarizes the issues with Brown.
^Well, on that basis, the list of affected schools seems under inclusive. Swarthmore, Williams, Claremont McKenna, Princeton, and Rutgers should be included. Incidentally, as a Wesleyan alumnus, I must say that Brown video made my eyes hurt.
I was every bit as narrow minded about ultra conservative schools, so I get this. A friend of my son’s was headed to Liberty and mentioned what a great place he thought it was. He came home rather enthusiastic about possibly applying there, but we discouraged that idea.