I know this isn’t what you asked for, but some larger schools have very distinct “college within a college” programs, that are often honors based. Some of these seem to skew “right.” The first one that comes to mind is Clemson’s Lyceum program. The motto is actually, “Big school. Small Community. Great books.”
University of Tulsa also just launched a new program. And University of Austin just started taking applications for its first class after raising 200 million. I understand that the first 100 kids accepted get free tuition for all four years
The OP should be fully aware that this university exists only on paper at the moment and is unaccredited, which means students are ineligible for federal or private student aid or loans (hence the seeming generosity). A degree from an unaccredited college will be useless for graduate school and in the eyes of many companies, so it’s a risky proposition in my opinion.
Oh wow, I think you are right. I saw that the state gave them authority to grant degrees and I thought that amounted to accreditation. I guess not. Thanks for clarifying!
I think the FIRE data is interesting overall (and I’m a huge fan of the organization) - but I wouldn’t use average Viewpoint (or their average rankings) to imply apolitical. (You could use “Tolerance for Conservative Speakers” as a proxy for conservative friendliness, though I just have no idea how many people are included in these estimates or how trustworthy the data is.)
I think determining apolitical is really more of a school-by-school basis - talking to students/families, looking at school newspapers, etc. Unfortunately you have to sacrifice scale for accuracy.
I get your point. While he is looking for more of an apolitical environment, I use the FIRE ratio more to look for balance rather than lack of interest in politics. So I may have worded that incorrectly.
Any school that is 10:1 plus on the viewpoint ratio I think would be too lopsided for what my son is looking for. 2:1 3:1 4:1 would be more his speed, in either direction. And of course it’s just one datapoint.
I’m sure there are some conservative students at Davidson but I am married to an alum and know many many alums, most of whom are not conservative at all. We have one Davidson alum friend who is now conservative (he was not when he was in school) and have many more friends from Davidson who are left of center, some extremely left of center. One of our alum friends has a son who goes there now. I have not talked to the son about his political beliefs, but knowing his parents I would guess he is moderately progressive. One of our Davidson friends is an elected Democratic politician and another is the most liberal person I know and a well known authority on global politics. Of course, I don’t know the whole alumni base or the whole current student body but just wanted to give that perspective.
Furman is the school I was going to suggest for a conservative, non religious, school. Although I’m sure there will also be plenty of religious students there.
Niche has student ratings of political leanings under the student profiles.