Tag: pew research center

College Students Mostly Feel Comfortable Speaking in Class, Study Finds Despite Itself

Jonathan Wilson

This week, Heterodox Academy—an organization founded in 2015 to promote “open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement” in universities—released the results of a survey conducted in the fall of 2020 on U.S. college campuses.

This second annual Campus Expression Survey, in a report authored by Melissa Stiksma, a doctoral student in industrial-organizational psychology at George Mason University, purports to substantiate Heterodox Academy’s claim that “students and professors have been ‘walking on eggshells,’ censoring their opinions and thereby depriving others and themselves the opportunity to learn from counterarguments and constructive debate.”

Republican students are especially susceptible to self-censorship on campus, according to the report. To be sure, the report attributes this self-censorship primarily to the fear of other students’ opinions, rather than to fear of reprisals from professors or administrators. But Stiksma told Inside Higher Ed that it shows “that Republican students are not part of the conversation on some of the biggest issues” on American campuses.

These are bold claims related to heated public debates about the future of American higher education. But I find that the survey—on the whole—does not support these assertions.

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U.S. Adults Want Teachers Vaccinated

Jonathan Wilson

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in mid-February, adults in the United States have grown more concerned (since July 2020) about the effects of K-12 school closures on student academic progress. They have grown less concerned about the risk of SARS-CoV-2 spreading among students or teachers.

The risk of losing academic ground is now the leading factor cited by American adults as a determinant of whether schools should return to in-person instruction—ahead of students’ emotional wellbeing as well as pandemic transmission risks.

However, almost three in five American adults still say that K-12 school buildings should not reopen for in-person instruction until teachers have the chance to get vaccinated.

That becomes an overwhelming consensus among Black, Hispanic, Asian, and lower-income adults, as well as among Democrats, all of whom say, at least two-to-one and as much as four-to-one, that teachers should be vaccinated before K-12 schools return to in-person instruction.

In other words, statistically, the most vulnerable Americans are also the ones who most want teachers vaccinated before K-12 school buildings reopen.

You can find the news release about the report, along with links to the full data, at the Pew Research Center’s website.

Who Trusts Professors?

Jonathan Wilson

The Pew Research Center reports that young Americans today seem to have much less confidence in their public institutions (and humanity in general) than older Americans do. Yet according to “Trust and Distrust in America,” Americans aged 18-29 are the only age cohort who trust college professors more than they trust the military or police officers:

Considering that young Americans are probably much more likely than older Americans to have direct personal contact with college faculty members, that seems like a vindication for higher education. (On the other hand, if one quarter of American adults under 30 years old don’t have much confidence in college professors, that seems less encouraging.)

The same report suggests that college professors have a relatively high trust “floor,” considering how controversial higher education can seem these days. Americans, on the whole, view professors as more trustworthy than religious leaders and much more trustworthy than business leaders. Even “low trusters” generally express confidence in professors:

Chart showing that those with high personal trust have higher confidence in key leadership groups.

Finally, of course, comes the partisan difference: Republicans view college professors far less favorably than independents and Democrats do. Yet Republicans express about as much confidence in faculty members as in government employees generally:

Chart showing that there are sizable partisan divisions in public confidence in leaders and institutions.

Facing Facts (and Avoiding Alarmism)

Jonathan Wilson

pewreport-factopinion-1This morning, I saw a Reuters story with an alarming lede: “Only a quarter of U.S. adults in a recent survey could fully identify factual statements—as opposed to opinion—in news stories, the Pew Research Center found in a study released on Monday.”

Well, that doesn’t sound good, I thought.

This seems like important territory for history instruction to address. It might also provide a useful reading for students. So I pulled up the Pew report in question: “Distinguishing Between Factual and Opinion Statements in the News” (by Amy Mitchell, Jeffrey Gottfried, Michael Barthel and Nami Sumida, dated June 18, 2018).

There’s a lot to like about the way this study was conducted. But I have concerns.

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