https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/07/book-review-the-university-we-need-radical-proposal-for-higher-education/
Journalists almost never know what they're talking about when it comes to higher education. It would have been faster to google conservative schools than to write that article. They should be asking why most of these conservative schools can't compete.
I posted an article here last year, but I can't remember if it was about religious or political views. I remember that it covered a study that found that people's views don't really change after attending college. People just have to accept that certain personalities are attracted to certain fields. The issue with conservative colleges is that most of them are very religious. No one is going to win the Nobel Prize for trying to prove Young Earth Creationism. Only about half of scientists believe in a higher power. It just comes with the territory. The best scientists are not going to want to teach at a religious school that restricts them, and it has nothing to do with being liberal or conservative. Some things are made to be political when they're not. To scientists, climate change is not a conservative vs. liberal issue.
Fine, I'll read it. "As someone who has had an academic appointment at Hillsdale he feels comfortable dismissing the scholarship of much of its faculty, bemoaning the low caliber of the student body, and highlighting the venality of the administration. More generally, Treadgold pointedly observes that colleges which swim against the dominant leftist tide are neither eminent nor influential. He does not see in these institutions the building blocks of an academic renaissance and a flourishing of learning. His ultimate aim is to encourage genuine scholarship, not the furtherance of a particular politics." Wow, he sounds like a real ray of sunshine. But more to the point, he's trying to have things both ways. He wants an apolitical institution that... appeals especially to non-leftists. And he wants a high caliber of student, even while he complains that such students aren't attracted to the similar institutions that already exist.
It can be done, or at least it could be once upon a time. The University of Chicago was started up by a Baptist scholar in the 1890s as a deliberate attempt to counter the traditional universities of the northeast, not just championing meritocracy, graduate programs, and working students, but new ideas as well. The endeavor had instant credibility as they poached the best faculty and were willing to pay them very well. A former president wrote: “If the first faculty had met in a tent, this still would have been a great university.” The chance to study under the best attracted excellent students, many of whom went on to become leaders of the next generation around the country. I’m not sure how distinct they still are from other institutions in our own day. Of interest, there was a previous U. of Chicago that fizzled, largely because they didn’t arrange the resources to properly fund a university. That Rockefeller filthy lucre can be awfully useful. I should note that I was not a student or faculty at Chicago, I’ve just been reading about it recently and continued thinking about the things that made it unusual. There’s a good book on the early years called Harper’s University.
