USA TODAY: Do professors lean left? Follow the money for a clue (and my response)

[yurbud]

Do professors lean left? Follow the money for a clue

Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly is just one of many who say things like the "corridors of higher education" are filled with liberals.

Today's Boston Globe will add some fuel to the critics' fire:

Professors and others in the education field have given more to federal candidates running in 2008 than those who work in the oil, pharmaceutical, and computer industries -- a sign of how academia has become a much bigger player in the political cash sweepstakes.

Of the more than $7 million that academics donated in the first half of this year, more than $4.1 million went to presidential campaigns, particularly Barack Obama's, according to a study released this month by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The Illinois senator brought in almost $1.5 million, while Hillary Clinton received nearly $940,000.

Republican Mitt Romney was in third place, with about $448,000, but overall, three-quarters of contributions went to Democrats.

FULL TEXT:
http://blogs.usatoday.com/onpolitics/2007/08/do-professors-l.html

My comment posted under that:

While many in academia lean left, we give money to Democrats for very pragmatic reasons: they sometimes help education while Republicans actively harm it.

If you listen to Republican rhetoric, you realize that what they love, they deregulate and give money to, and what they hate, they regulate and defund.

When the energy pirates in California used deregulation to bilk us out of $10 billion, the Republicans somehow made it our hapless governor's fault, and shoehorned Arnold into office. Rather than fight to get our money back, Arnold made deep budget cuts that resulted in a third of the part time faculty being fired at one of the schools where I teach.

The bulk of community college instructors are part timers who have to patch several jobs together to make a living and don't get health insurance from any of our employers.

Democrats do little to help us, and Republicans priorities are more tax cuts for the wealthy and more service cuts for the rest of us.

Education is the primary means of upward mobility, but when teachers barely make a living, and most kids have to work full time and go to school part time, and maybe finish their bachelor's degree by the time they are thirty (if they are lucky), we have to look at who is going to keep the lights on and make our paycheck.

Republicans would do away with public education so most of us would have to choose between a religious school or Walmart Elementary and McDonald's University. If we couldn't afford even that, we'd just have to remain ignorant, which they would prefer anyway. As Karl Rove said, "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans...unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."

I could have added it's like a kid who has to choose between living with a parent who beats him or one who merely neglects him but remembers to put the food on the table some of the time.

[RaleighNCDUer]

1. Well said.

kick

[bemildred]

2. USA Today wants to talk about money and influence?

Do these "writers" even have a clue about who they work for?

[Selatius]

3. I have known several students drop out of high school and get their GED

They dropped out at 9th or 10th grade just so they can get more time to work to pay off the bills at home. It lops off several years of schooling so that it can be diverted to making money for bills. For some students who come from broken homes, they're often left on their own, and there is no help for them, so they are even more likely to drop out early, get a GED, and then get a job, and if they try to go to college or community college, they hit the wall of high tuition and the prospect of interest bearing student loans.

[kstewart33]

4. Some thoughts from a former professor.

I taught for 18 years as a professor in a private university, in the business school. As a business prof, I realized that more profs are moderate and left-leaning because few Repubs will spend the some 8 to 10 years getting an MBA and Ph.d. when they can immediately make much more with their MBA.

You'll see plenty of Repubs in the MBA program. I taught thousands of them. But in the Ph.d. programs? Not so much. Repubs take their MBAs and earn money. The others who truly want to be academics stay on for 4 to 6 more years making peanuts to get that doctorate and teach.

I'd bet than in the other areas of academia, especially the arts and humanities, it is even more the case. Do you know of one right winger who would spend years in grad school to make $30k a year teaching English lit? I've never met one.

[yurbud]

6. I know some righties in English and philosophy. They just compartmentalize

There was a great line in Mississippi Burning when Gene Hackman's character said his racist father would rather starve than be fed and know a black man was fed too. Righties in academia are like that. They want to spite gays and Muslims and have their tax cuts, even though they are undermining their ability to make a living or teach their classes they way they think is best.

[EFerrari]

5. After many years in academia, I've only ever met three conservatives

who read enough to earn a doctorate and get tenure. :shrug: