The-Ave.US

An article at the Chronicle from Robin Wilson Shows that the UW is not alone in the decay of academic government:

Some key  findings from the survey:

• Administrators are more confident than either students or faculty members about how well their institutions are educating students. Fifty-two percent of university leaders said their universities do an “excellent” job of educating, compared with 34 percent of students and only 26 percent of faculty members who feel that way.
• Thirty-six percent of administrators and 28 percent of faculty members said the most pressing problem in higher education is the need for more resources, while students said the biggest problem is the cost of tuition.
• While critics have charged liberal professors with “indoctrinating” students, the survey found that on some issues, such as the government’s responsibility for providing jobs or reducing inequality, students tend to come to college already holding liberal views. On some of those same issues, the survey found, college seniors as a group are actually somewhat more conservative than are college freshmen. “Students move very little in terms of party affiliation” during their college education, says the book. That finding casts doubt on the idea that liberal professors are responsible for persuading students to move sharply to the left.
• In academic disciplines in which political, social, and moral issues are most likely to be discussed—the social sciences and the humanities—the faculty is the most politically unbalanced, with about 60 percent of professors in those fields identifying themselves as Democrats. Meanwhile, the book says, professors who identify themselves as Republicans are more concentrated in fields that are the least likely to include discussions about political matters.