How diverse are our campuses? Study says 5 of every 6 USD Profs are Democrats.

Pat Powers

On the same day that the South Dakota Board of Regents were posting about bringing the University mascots to Pierre to kiss some Republican booty…

… A study on intellectual diversity was being released which shows ideologically, that the faculty at the institutions are more likely kicking Republican booty while their administrators are putting on a show.

This past Friday, a study was released on the website for the National Association of Scholars, titled “Partisan Registration and Contributions of Faculty in Flagship Colleges,” by Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens, January 17, 2020 as they describe the ideological leanings of Universities across the country, including several located in South Dakota.  As noted in the chart with the article (condensed for picking out the South Dakota institutions):

(As noted in the chart from Partisan Registration and Contributions of Faculty in Flagship Colleges by Mitchell Langbert and Sean Stevens, National Association of Scholars, January 17, 2020)

D:R Registration Ratio

Of the 12,372 professors sampled, 48.4 percent are registered Democrats and 5.7 percent are registered Republicans, a ratio of 8.5:1. In 2016 Gallup (Jones, 2016) finds that for the general population, 29 percent are Democrats and 26 percent are Republicans, a ratio of 1.1:1. The 8.5:1 ratio is lower than previous findings, such as Langbert, et al. (2016) and Langbert (2018), which found 10:1 to 12:1 because those studies looked at the highest-ranked institutions, in which partisan affiliation is the most skewed. The institutions in this study are the most elite in each state, but they are not in all cases the most elite nationally.

and..

Summary and Conclusion

The D:R donation ratio and the D:R registration ratio tell a story that is broadly consistent. The D:R donation ratio favors the Democratic Party in all nine disciplines sampled. Compared to the D:R registration ratio, the skewness in the D:R donation ratio for each discipline is more extreme than for registration. For six of the eight or nine disciplines, the D:R donation ratio exceeds 100:1. The D:R donation ratio among female professors is greater than among their male counterparts, and the ratios are lowest in the Midwest. It is also evident that assistant professors are less engaged in party politics as measured by the smaller percentage who register and who make political contributions.

Read the entire article here.

According to the intellectual diversity study, nationally, voter registration records show a ratio of 8.4:1, for Democrats to Republicans. In South Dakota, it’s better.. but in varying degrees.

Dakota Wesleyan provides the smallest sample, but the closest margin at nearly a 1:1 basis between Republicans and Democrats. And it starts to sharply decline from there.

At South Dakota State University, for every Republican Professor you run across, three others are Democrat, with a 2.9 to 1 ratio.

And it’s worse at USD, with a 5.3 to 1 ratio. At the institution which claims itself to be our state’s flagship university (obviously their ad people don’t live there), for every 6 professors running around on campus, only 1 of them would be registered as a Republican, and the other 5 are Democrats.

Not a good defense when Universities start speaking against intellectual diversity laws.

58 thoughts on “How diverse are our campuses? Study says 5 of every 6 USD Profs are Democrats.”

  1. How is this reasonable in a red state like South Dakota?

    Eliminate tenure; start hiring more conservative professors; start demanding accountability of the BOR.

    Better yet, don’t send your kids to these left-wing indoctrination centers.

    1. Do you think Cory Heidelberger is smart?

      Right now he is lying saying trusts hide income from the IRS which is false.

      So is Cory a liar or is he dumb?

          1. Because the trusts are typically structured in such a way that the beneficiaries own an interest in the trust, not the actual trust itself. Also, South Dakota allows trusts to exist in perpetuity, meaning they can typically jump outside the federal transfer tax system forever. I am not saying it is illegal, but it absolutely avoids taxation.

            1. The beneficiaries are paying the tax. You never want a trust to pay the tax because of the tax brackets in a trust.

              Trust me, the income is taxed by the IRS. Nobody avoids paying tax on income.

              So is Cory a liar or dumb?

  3. From the data, it appears that Progressives only hire other Progressives. It also appears that the faculty has a big hand in hiring.

  4. I’m outraged that they don’t have any communist or socialist or libertarian professors. So diversity. We need all ideas represented.

  5. Now we have information from which we can do something significant to improve the education product at our institutions of higher learning.

    Personnel is policy. You don’t change personnel, do not expect anything to change.

    Professors are the personnel who deliver the product.

    Unless the Legislature and Governor are willing to continue the charade of working around the edges which will have absolutely no impact on the personnel/policy, the only substantive power they have is the power of the purse.

    To be clear, I do not advocate change in policy because it is inherent liberal professors can’t provide an educational product which prepares students to excel in the chosen fields. I advocate change because the product (preparation to excel) is not even marginal but is grossly substandard.

    While it is mostly anecdotal, I have discerned the current emphasis in our colleges is not preparation to excel. For example, too many accountant grads think being “woke” makes up for not being able to be a good basic cost accountant. If I want a climate change perspective, I’ll just read Greta so I don’t need a Jr. beginning cost accountant’s views on anything but cost accounting.

  6. This is very upsetting.

    I’ve saved for a long time to send my kids to college and I don’t want them to just go in and get indoctrinated by the Mini-Maddows in academia.

    There needs to be some basic fairness. Now please start reforming our colleges and fixing this problem legislators. And Gov Noem.

    1. Mom, I think you are making excuses for your kiddies. Check out colleges that have an excellent reputation in the academic field they want to pursue such as nursing, teaching, engineering, etc. Just do your homework when you are searching out the right school for your kiddos. I never looked at what their political affiliation was. I looked at what was the best fit for me.

  7. The problem is actually much worse than these statistics indicate. The total one-sidedness of our campuses means that anyone who isn’t a leftwinger just keeps their mouth shut because they know they will be ridiculed, undermined, and de-platformed for not going along with the liberal groupthink.

  8. I would say that the legislature simply has to get tough with the colleges. They have to cut budgets and fire deans and presidents and demand that these huge disparities get fixed. The law last spring was good but liberal bureaucrats just drag their feet and stall and wait out the effects of these laws. Get tough!

  9. My hard earned money is being used to fund left-wing a–holes who yell at my kids and flunk them for not being liberals.

    It’s infuriating.

    This. Has. To. End.

    Noem, where are you?

    1. The Board of Regents are Constitutional entity separate from the Governor’s direct executive control. The entity granted the most authority over the Regents is the Legislature via the power of the purse. We want real change? It starts with them doing the hard work vs. what they’ve done in the past (dancing around on the edges)

  10. Diversity is only needed when more liberals are needed… say liberals

    Not when there are a lack of conservatives

    But maybe these liberal professors would be willing to give part of their salaries to k-12 counterparts

  11. The arrogance of liberal professors and administrators knows no limit. You need to know this. Unless you root them out and change the people in charge, the culture of silence and suppression will never change. Troy is right. Hire new presidents who understand this. And replace all the RINOs that Daugaard put on the Board of Regents.

    1. did you have any kids grow up to be teachers? are you a teacher yourself? are you volunteering in any classrooms?

      my guess is to none of the above- people need to stop whining about a problem and start getting involved in a solution.

  12. Wait…. so is this conservative blog, in perfeft hamront, calling for, *gasp* AFFIRMATIVE ACTION????????

    From the conservative talking points I have heard my whole life I cannot believe that this would be true.

    Weird.

  13. Privatize them and turn them into religious based institutions. It will drive the Bernie Bros crazy!

  14. All of this hysterical hand-wringing is pointless unless you know one highly important piece of information: what is the ratio of people earning doctorates? I don’t know the answer to that question, but my guess is the number of democrats earning doctorates outnumbers the number of republicans earning doctorates. You don’t know that republicans are underrepresented until you know more about the pool of potential professors.

    In addition, this study fails to include the number of faculty who are registered independents or members of other parties, or even those with no party affiliation.

  15. I’m sick and tired of keyboard warriors on here bitching about how many professors are democrats and republicans. How many of you were intelligent enough or were willing to get a degree in education?

    Is it really that odd that most South Dakotans who went to USD, or really any of the public universities became Republicans? There is a huge difference in the number of Democrats and Republicans in the state.

    Also, has anyone actually looked at where the concentrations of Democrats are at in the state? Who’s willing to live in Vermillion ?

    I do not think political ideology should be a factor in hiring an educator – rather the quality and skills should be the only barrier. USD has produced some fine GOP legislators for this state. If it’s not broke – don’t meddle in it.

      1. I believe these SD Universities hire who is the best qualified and who has top notch experience rather than what their political label is. You can’t molly coddle college students like little babies, they are now adults who can think for themselves. Give up trying to control how they should think. Cut the cord and let them become critical thinkers.

      2. For hiring or for college admission?

        Typically to make sure individuals or groups as a minority of a given group are represented or included – are represented.

        Are you saying Republicans in South Dakota are a minority group?

        1. The majority of the people living in SD and representing SD are registered Republicans. It’s just a label that doesn’t mean anything to me. I vote for the individual based on what they stand for.

  17. Liberals circling the wagons again to shut out Republicans so they can have total control of the education process of our children. It’s time for a revolution. It can start with firing a university president or two, especially the ones who are openly flouting the intellectual diversity law. Are you listening in Brookings? Hello Barry!

  18. GOP Coyote,

    You are spot on! I’m a Coyote myself, though from across the aisle.If anything, I would contend that collegiate freedom of thought flourishes in a course where one has the opportunity to learn, or at least listen to, an instructor with a different philosophy. Some of my favorite classes were those taught by conservative B-school professors who could handle serious questions from liberal, idealistic students, or seriously leftward professors who were challenged by their conservative students.

    Thank you for the fresh aire.

  19. This is going to sound terrible but, I believe the majority of most teachers anymore “Teach because they cannot do”. I find academia as a whole a bunch of entitled gas bags who run off at the mouth about theory and rarely focus on practical matters. I always thing about that skit in the movie Back to School where Rodney Dangerfield interrupts the stuffy ivy league snob teaching the Business Class to tell him all the practical things he is missing his proposal to build a factory. The professor berates him but, Rodney tells him he needs to build his factory in Fantasy Land. I know that is gross exaggeration but, its a great example of what is happening today. My child attends DSU and her professor told her she had to code her program in a specific way. Anyone who knows anything about Developing code knows if I give a task to 10 Programmers I will probably get 10 versions of code back, all work the and do the job but, different. So many are down right awful and have an axe to grind and most can’t cut it in the real world so they hide and teach. The teachers who have a real passion for it and enjoy it are easy to spot and are not their to drive an agenda but, are there to help their students be successful. I think these people are becoming more rare as time goes on

    1. I agree. Our state universities should rely more on adjuncts who are actual practitioners in the field rather than relying on those that have never left the ivory tower. Adjuncts are cheaper and provide a better practical education.

  20. Many years ago I heard a talk given by the Dean of Students at UMass say “we must avoid letting our graduate studies program become a haven for prolonged adolescence.”
    By the time he said that, it was already pretty obvious it had already happened. The graduate students were just a collection of goofy juveniles and whiny brats.
    There is a problem with people who go directly to graduate school and then into teaching without any exposure to the outside world. They don’t grow up, that’s why they are liberals; they’ve never grown up. It’s that whole Ivory Tower thing.

  21. There is power in the purse. Maybe we should cut college funding until we know that professors are teaching content accurately. There is no reason to skew student thinking toward either party. In fact students should not even be able to tell if that professor is of a certain party affiliation. Just teach the subject and shut up!

  22. This conversation is hilarious! I think we should check every educational institution in the state for employee party affiliation–since it seems to be a factor in quality of education. Enact a law; step on local control; quit funding education (oops, you’ve already done that,); shut down the schools until it’s ‘fixed.’

    Get a grip people….fuss about something that’s important…like healthcare, fair taxation; adequate funding for education; infrastructure; mental health facilities, etc.

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