In this blog I wanted to address the claim that Universities are funded by people with political agendas that are very different than they were 35 years ago.
I cannot comment about what Universities were like 35 years ago, because I did not go to one 35 years ago. Also I cannot speak on all Universities but only a couple. The two Universities I can comment on are the University of Minnesota, my school, and the University of St. Catherine, an all-girl Catholic University that my wife went to. Naturally I am biased and believe the UofM is better than most schools, but if I step back, I am sure it is on par with most major state Universities. I wanted to address two points, University funding and teachings.
The funding is tricky. We have two types of Universities, public and private. Obviously private Universities receive funding from private sources, so I am more interested in public Universities. Traditionally, public Universities are funded by the state and decisions can be made by state governments. This does imply that public Universities in a particular state can have a conservative or public influence, which is why I naturally cringe at names of Universities from Red states. The reality is that many schools in Red states are consider “public Ivy schools” and are very good schools by any standard.
Though it is true that the percentage of state funding for state Universities has gone down, Universities have many ways of generating revenue that is not linked to outside public funding. The price of tuition has gone up at a rate of many times the number of inflation. It cost me right around $8K for my last semester (so $16K a year) at the UofM and I live off campus and do not pay for the meal plan. With those things, the average cost of tuition for the UofM is around $15k a semester or $30K a year.
Here is a source for those numbers…
http://www.ohe.state.mn.us/sPages/TuitionChart.cfm?State=MN&pageID=101
The University of Minnesota has around 50K students. If most of those students are paying $30K a year, the revenue would be around $1.5 billion. Obviously a good number of students do not live on campus, and even though there are other things they pay for, such as parking (cost me $25-30 per week) a nice conservative number would be $1 billion a year generated. In addition to that, college sports bring in hundreds of millions of dollars. On the topic of sports, TCF Bank Stadium is the country’s most expensive college football stadium coming in at just under $350 million. Nearly half was paid for by the state of Minnesota, the other half by the University (which the students pay for though a “stadium charge.”
The point I am trying to make is that Universities are not dependent or influenced by single donations with political influences. YES, it is TRUE that outside donations can fund much or all of certain departments at a University, but those are usually graduate programs and are in the areas of business, law, and medicine. The idea that multiple departments, especially undergraduate programs, are funded by or influenced by a single political view is not realistic. Universities are too big, cost too much money, and are cash cows. To say they are funded by people with political agendas is like saying corporations are funded by people with political agendas, more the opposite is the case.
BUT let’s say there are political agendas. I will explain my educational experience at the University of Minnesota and my wife’s at St Catherine University. As I said before, I am biased towards my school and I am also biased towards the way I structured my education. Unless my bias is correct, my experience is more the normal and not the exception.
I will briefly explain my education. I first became a Religious Studies major (not to be confused with theology) and then picked up an Ancient Mediterranean Studies major. I also picked up a minor in Jewish studies. Because of my majors, I wanted to go into teaching, so I became an education major (which is basically taking a class in every area of study.) Because of the requirements of the education major, I dropped my AMS major 3/4s of the way through and became a history major instead. I did however end up dropping the education major because I decided against teaching because I could not handle an additional two years of school with two kids.
Because of all the changes my education is very complicated. An Area of Concentration is defined by having 4 classes in a specific area that are linked or connected. Between my RS major and my History major, I could have the following AoCs:
Judaism/Jewish Studies
Christianity
Abrahamic Religions (Judaism, Christianity, Islam)
Ancient Mediterranean Religions
Religion in America
The Evolution-Creationism Controversy/History and Philosophy of Science and the Design Arguments
Middle Eastern History
Western/US History
Modern History
As you can see, there are many different views that can be promoted on both a Liberal and Conservative side. The department of Jewish Studies naturally takes a more “pro-Israel” view point, but that is evened out with classes in history, the Middle East, and Globalization.
Nearly every single class I took in the RS studies department was taught by a believer. This is also the case for Ancient Mediterranean Studies. At the same time it was taught in a scholarly way. Even though they all believed, it led me and others, more towards atheism. For others it did the opposite. The key is that they were not pushing one belief either way.
The real truth teller is my experience with The Evolution-Creationism Controversy/History and Philosophy of Science and the Design Arguments.
I took classes in this area in the following departments:
Biology
Education
Philosophy
History
History of Science
Religious Studies
One of the biology courses was taught by a biologist and admitted atheist. He also expressed that everyone has a bias and his is certainly biology. The class in the Education department was taught by a Conservative Evangelical Christian. One in the RS and Phil department is an Existentialist with a Ph.D. from Harvard (he is very Christian.) Others in Philosophy were epistemologists. And then there were the typical historian view.
When covering much of the same material, in many different departments, it is easy to pick out different types of styles. The biologists taught different than the historian and both taught different than the philosopher. There was one thing in common though…besides minor details here and there, they all agreed with each other. Though Biologist Randy Moore, Sehoya Cotner, and Mark Decker are trained in the area of science, they have authored a number of respect books on the history of the evolution-creationism controversy. Nothing they said (Science-biology department) contradicts what Ph.D.s in the areas of History of Science and Philosophy of Science (Both Liberal Arts-Humanities departments) have said.
More importantly it is HOW people are taught and WHAT people are taught. I have only had one professor tell me what to think, and that was the Ph.D. from Harvard. All of the others teach HOW to research, how to evaluate a source to determine if they are credible. They teach basic philosophical, scientific reasoning, and statistics. We are taught how to think for ourselves and come to our own conclusions. The classes are discussion based and all sides of a debate are addressed. With one exception, we were never told WHAT to think, who to vote for, or what religion we should believe in. We were taught accurate material that was scholarly and peer-reviewed, while being given the opportunity to do our own research to invalidate what we were being taught. The senior paper had to be new and original, a topic that was barely been touched on because there is no point is rewording a few people’s books. Proper research and science do not have political agendas. Science does not care if evolution is true or false or if climate change is man-made. Religious people and those in the energy industry care about whether it is true or false, science does not. That has been my experience at the UofM.
My wife went to St. Catherine University. She received a BS in Nursing and minored in theology. Oddly enough we agree on nearly every point, including religion. She says that not a single teacher or professor told her what to think, the same as has been my experience.
There is one very telling fact. As a Liberal, I often hear jokes about how Conservatives are uneducated. The reality is that college undergraduates are about 50/50 Liberal/Conservative. It skews more Liberal with post-graduate degrees, but the undergraduate numbers are curious. In addition to the numbers, many friends, family members, and acquaintances went to the UofM and are Conservative. What explains this and what explains these numbers?
Is it because Universities are either Liberal or Conservative? Possibly, but then why are Conservatives coming out of Liberal UofM? If they have a political motive or agenda, they are certainly doing a poor job of pushing it on people. I mean a 50% success rate when the students coming in are already at 50%?
Sure, I get there are bad teachers and professors, maybe even entire departments that tell people what to believe and who to vote for but I am sure that is the vast minority and is not representative of most Universities. Or maybe the wife and I live in the one state that got it right, the one state that has schools that do not just tell people what to believe, but how to think and reason. It is possible that we went to the best schools in the country…but if I were forced to make an educated guess, I would guess this is how the vast majority of Universities work…
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