I think it’s a tad funny…substitute narrow minded for the word liberal or conservative - because really that is what is being said - that these parents feel the position of the university is so narrow(liberal)(conservative) that they want a more open environment. Free speech is free speech and I don’t care what side of the political fence a campus is on but if one group tries to shut down or marginalize another group and that sentiment is pervasive, I too, would struggle writing a check.
It’s fairly easy. Studying engineering, business, medicine, most hard sciences or anything mostly dealing with real world, quantifiable, provable areas is where you will find more conservative students and faculty. Everything else where your work has little/no real world consequences is full of more liberal people. So I would concentrate more on the subject area than the school. Naturally schools focused more on one area than the other will lean differently.
I guess there’s no business, medicine or hard sciences here in the SF Bay Area then. We’re all artists and philosophers here. 8-}
I laugh at parents saying that “Brown (or whatever liberal, selective college) is off the table.”
Well, 92% of those parents’ kids aren’t going to get in anyway so…
Climate science is a pretty hard science with real world consequences. Are there a lot of conservatives studying that field?
Is Yale particularly liberal? Yale College Republicans endorsed Trump: http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2016/08/10/yale-college-republicans-endorse-trump/
Yale College Republicans also set up BBQ stand and gave out free food nearby when Yale graduate student union did its version of “hunger strike.”
According to my S, the majority of his suitemates and friends are politically moderate. There seem to be more far left students than far right students, but both groups make big noise and get his attention. He think the “competition” is pretty cool.
I think this is probably true at most schools, with several obvious exceptions. Faculty of course is a different question. But it is important to remember that when we are talking about this stuff, we are generally talking about a small group of students who believe deeply that their views on a variety of issues should be the only permissible ones. The issue though is not necessarily what percentage of students are trying fascism on for size, but the manner in which the administration responds. If you pay attention, the difference between the way Berkley and Middlebury responded to the violence both experienced can tell you something about how the administration percieves the “free flow of ideas”.
Sometimes it is not necessarily the general political leaning of a school. My daughter, as an example, is generally very liberal. Thinks a lot about gender and sexuality issues, has spent entirely too much time trying to explain to her very old father the differences in he/she/ze/they and who among her circle likes to be called what. Wesleyan and Vassar were her final two schools. Brown turned her off when she visited. Not because it was “too liberal” but because the students she observed seemed militant/aggressive in their liberalism (to her), whereas she did not get that vibe at either Wes or Vassar. Basically the point is that the political climate on a campus is a legitimate part of the “fit” we are always banging on about here.
If only “science” would develop places where people could go to receive basic medical care, maybe it wouldn’t be necessary to denigrate people who hold sincere and honest opinions about the consequences of abortion, and believe that it is wrong for their government to compel them to support what they believe to be a sin.
Or, if that is too hard to do, because Gaia knows there should be no reason why the “right” people should be concerned with what some in bred hillbillies think, then maybe Planned Parenthood could stop doing things like spending $800,000+ to elect Jon Ossof (I am sure there is a woeful lack of medical facilities in suburban Atlanta), or $38,000,000 to elect democrats in the 2016 election. Do you have any idea how many cervical screenings could have been done with $38,000,000? But when you join the game and play for one team, then you have to expect that the other side is going to strike back. No matter how much you whine about it.
Perfect. That way the parents in question could keep their children sheltered and protected from different points of view and ensure that they turn out just like them.
I have to admit that after this past year’s Veterans Day flag vandalism incident, I had real qualms about the possibility of my son going there. But it was his choice on where to apply, not mine.
It’d be cool if this could continue to be about colleges and not things that will get this thread shut down.
Then again, the OP was pretty political and acknowledged that.
^LOL. You are not wrong.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Planned Parenthood, ACA, Women’s Right to Choose, etc. are not remotely connected to the original post. Please stay on topic. 12 posts deleted.
That is probably true, at least in the short run, but if you read some of the Brown newspaper articles, there is great concern that the school is slipping further behind their Ivy brethren in terms of number of applicants, quality of the student body, university ranking and endowment size.
If a number of potential Brown students apply to equivalent schools such Vanderbilt, Rice or Emory, that will materially impact the school.
@Zinhead can you link to some? Most of the concern I recall reading about is that Paxson is pushing us away from the university-college model and we will eventually just be a poor man’s Harvard rather than a fundamentally different university.
Well, I think with ever decreasing acceptance rates at Mid-Atlantic, NE and California universities/colleges I think they are safe for now, but I do think that schools in many areas of the country that tipped red saw a significant decrease in applications - I know Kenyon self-reported the effect and mentioned Grinnell and Oberlin amongst others suffering as well, for now.
Here’s a link to the Kenyon commentary that @Chembiodad mentions:
http://kenyoncollegian.com/2017/04/13/political-divide-impacts-class-of-2021-admissions/
@iwannabe_Brown - I could not find the specific piece I was referring to, but here are some similar ones:
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2015/09/25/brown-alums-have-lowest-median-salaries-in-ivy-league/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2011/11/20/relying-on-tuition-struggling-to-compete/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2011/04/12/brown-struggles-to-compete-for-middleclass-recruits/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2017/01/24/aggressive-recruitment-cant-offset-limited-aid/
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2014/04/07/brunonians-highest-debt-ivy-league/
Of course, there was this piece which reads like it was from the Onion.
http://www.browndailyherald.com/2016/02/18/schoolwork-advocacy-place-strain-on-student-activists/
For every student not applying to brown, 1000 more student will try to take their place. If brown was not an ivy, there may be a push back, but majority being presitge whores, Brown will keep attracting hordes of student.
In our case brown’s Net Price Calculator makes it not affordable for our family;
Brown will loose middle class students as applicant, if Brown can not match other ivies for brown share of school contribution as people will apply where others colleges are offering more money
I would be much more concerned sending my kid to a state school with a Republican governor who slashed funding for higher education such as Wisconsin, or where the Republican Legislature censored liberal thought, like North Carolina.