Higher education just can’t catch a break.
College enrollments in Indiana are increasingly sliding down (52.9% in 2023 from 66.5% in 2009 according to the Indiana Commission for Higher Education), with no stop to the bleed in sight. College tuitions, inversely, are constantly climbing (nationally as well as in Indiana) and this year’s botched roll-out of the FAFSA does nothing to quell concern from students nervously awaiting their financial aid packages. And it seems that the value proposition of a post-high school degree no longer holds the status that it once did.
All of these are challenges, but one that concerns me the most is the misguided assumption that academia is unwelcoming and inhospitable to different perspectives, particularly conservative ones. Senate Bill 202 makes this claim based on a recent study that demonstrated 14.8% of conservative students felt they could not openly express their opinions.
Universities should serve as a consortium of ideas and perspectives, cultivating an environment where ideas are both comfortably shared but also challenged. As a political scientist, I hold a fierce commitment to non-partisanship that enables me to illustrate various views, offer counter arguments, and challenge assumptions of all of my students, regardless of their own ideological preferences. My discipline is understandably vulnerable to this criticism because, at least in part, of a misunderstanding of what we do.
Most broadly, the first essential part of academia is the production of knowledge. Research provides us with invaluable insight for progress, some of it life-saving and genuinely transformative, others at least insightful and still intriguing. It feeds curiosity and generates ideas and formative, fundamental pathways to advance. Some fields of study naturally lend themselves to clear objective measures, delineating the difference between thoughts and fact quite obvious. Theories are tested, facts are proven. Peer review research ensures that only the most rigorously-tested scholarship is published. Those findings are then shared through the second contribution of academia, the dissemination of knowledge.
Political Science, in the study of power and conflict and the myriad of viewpoints, ideologies, and partisan ties utilized in order to acquire such power, is far more complicated. We teach not only facts but perspectives, arguments, and opinions.
How do you share and convey differences? Some may choose only to offer their preferred side, justifying it as a somehow deeper, truer “truth.” Undoubtedly there are people in education who feel compelled to share only their preferred viewpoint. This, though, is where the critical thinking skills, mastered through collegiate study, are most valuable. You can identify these biases, you can recognize the difference between fact and opinion, and you can make an intelligent, informed division yourself.
My job is to educate, not indoctrinate. If I am good at my job, I leave a class full of students each semester questioning, criticizing, and ultimately coming to their own conclusions and determinations that underlie their ideological view. The value of a college education lies in training students not what to think but how.
Yes, there is factual knowledge that evades subjectivity and is measured through objective assessment.But beyond the 101 level understanding of defining representative democracy, I want my students to apply that knowledge into challenging the benefits and limitations of the system. How does gerrymandering impact representation? How does the shift of competition from the general election to the primary election impact the ideological extremes? How is policy-gridlock in part a by-product of polarization and, more importantly, how can we avoid it?
These questions don’t presuppose an agenda. They don’t reveal a hidden bias. I tell my students every semester how I don’t care if they complete my courses with the same perspectives and opinions they held when they began because what I want is for them to learn and understand other views. After all, you cannot argue against a perspective that you yourself cannot even articulate.
Teaching offers the opportunity for a wide reaching impact in shaping the hearts and minds of the future generations. We can only shape those minds that are present and open. I worry that if students, of any background, feel unwelcome or unheard, they make the deliberate decision not to attend. When this choice is the result of their own personal experience, we need to ask ourselves what we can do differently. When it is instead a reaction to misinformation and sweeping generalizations, we need to address the reason these assumptions exist and challenge those who perpetuate them.
One of the greatest compliments I get from students who complete my classes is when they tell me, “We can’t tell what you are.” I am an educator who wants my students to challenge their assumptions and consider alternative perspectives. That is who.
Laura Merrifield Wilson, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Indianapolis. She specializes in the study of political behavior, state and local government, and campaigns and elections. She is a regular political commentator and analyst. Send comments to [email protected].
