Leaning Left: Ranking Oklahoma Faculty

The truth that liberals outnumber conservatives amongst faculty school is just not information to anybody. A guide revealed by the left-leaning Brookings Establishment celebrated this truth in 2008.¹ This broadly accepted nationwide discovering raises the query: What about Oklahoma faculties and universities? The rating desk under represents one strategy to answering this query.

In 2003, at elite faculties and universities liberal school outnumbered conservative school 10:1.² Equally, even at giant public universities, liberal school outnumber conservative school 5:1.³ These findings are confirmed by quite a lot of different writers.⁴

In step with this sample, a 2020 research discovered that 83 % of school at each the College of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State College have been registered Democrats.⁵ The place conservative Oklahomans turn into extra involved about these info is of their impact. Mariani and Hewitt discovered that nearly half of self-identified average and conservative college students thought of themselves “far left” or “liberal” by the point they graduated, though they deny it was due to school bias.⁶

For the reason that Seventies a acknowledged measure of range within the office has been the extent to which the workers have comparable traits to the inhabitants base.⁷ Oklahoma is named one of the conservative states within the nation. Official voter registration numbers point out that 51.2% of Oklahomans are Republican, whereas 30% are Democrats.⁸

Furthermore, within the 2020 election, Donald Trump received 65% of the vote in Oklahoma to Joe Biden’s 32%.⁹ No Democratic presidential candidate has received a single county in Oklahoma since 2000.¹⁰ If the nationwide ratios for school talked about above maintain true for Oklahoma’s faculties and universities, then it’s not probably that the political beliefs of Oklahoma’s school align with these of Oklahomans usually.

In 2020, Langbert and Stevens tried to match college school throughout the nation utilizing two measures—social gathering registration and marketing campaign donations.¹¹ They checked out 4 universities in every state, together with the College of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State College, Oklahoma Baptist College, and the College of Tulsa. The evaluation under makes use of those self same measures and applies them to all 22 accredited four-year degree-granting establishments in Oklahoma. The findings are just like these of Langbert and Stevens. By analyzing school at each college, a rating system emerged.

Measuring Partisan Leanings

There are not any excellent measures of school ideological leanings available. Nevertheless, particular person voter registration info is publicly obtainable from the Oklahoma State Election Board and from quite a lot of knowledge distributors. Celebration voter registration is just not a direct measure of political ideology, however the two ideas have been extremely correlated in public opinion polls for a lot of a long time. So, it’s a affordable assumption that college school who select to affiliate with the Democratic Celebration probably maintain views to the left of most Oklahoma voters.

This undertaking attracts knowledge from Bonfire, a generally used marketing campaign software program. Bonfire collects knowledge instantly from official election board data. These are the identical identifiers a political marketing campaign would use to assemble a stroll listing or a cellphone listing.

Oklahoma’s 13 public universities have greater than 6,600 full-time faculty school members.¹² This undertaking examined school from all 22 accredited four-year faculties in Oklahoma, each private and non-private, which embody a few thousand extra school. To make the undertaking manageable, total school directories have been gathered from choose departments, packages, or faculties, relying on the scale of the varsity. These included part-time and full-time school in English, historical past, language, communication, felony justice, political science, sociology, psychology, philosophy and faith, and anthropology. These disciplines have been chosen due to their connection to politics, communication, and the humanities. The objective was to not determine the uncooked share of all school who lean left on each campus; moderately, the objective was to pattern some departments and create a rating system evaluating faculties.

Chosen school directories produced a listing of 1,290 school members. After eradicating these not registered to vote, these registered as Libertarians, and people formally registered as independents, the ultimate pattern measurement was 1,077. School school might not be registered to vote for quite a lot of causes (e.g., they might not be U.S. residents or they might not be everlasting residents of Oklahoma). Of those 1,077 school members, 72.4% are registered as Democrats and 27.6% as Republicans.

Rating Partisan Leaning

Utilizing this restricted pattern of college departments, every Oklahoma establishment was ranked from most Democratic-leaning to least. Oklahoma Panhandle State College had the best share of chosen school registered as Democrats at 100%. Nevertheless, on this small college, solely two school members have been recognized, so it was dropped from the rating listing attributable to its small measurement.

The rankings within the desk above are based mostly on the odds proven within the chart under. (To repeat: this research is just not a measure of all school members, however moderately of school members in chosen disciplines who’re registered to vote as a Republican or a Democrat.) Cameron College ranked first with 100% of chosen school being Democrats, adopted by the College of Oklahoma, College of Tulsa, Oklahoma Metropolis College, Oklahoma State College, and Oklahoma Christian College. Greater than 77% of chosen school at these faculties have been registered Democrats and fewer than 23% have been Republicans.

College in Oklahoma’s flagship faculties lean simply as left as these in different components of the nation. On the College of Oklahoma, 83.0% of the chosen school have been Democrats. At Oklahoma State College, the quantity was 80.4%. That is in line with Rothman and Stanley’s findings of 5:1 for giant public universities¹³ and Langbert and Stevens’s discovering of 83% registered Democrats at each OU and OSU.¹⁴

Three of the highest six faculties have been religiously affiliated. Tulsa College ranked third with 82.2%. Oklahoma Metropolis College ranked 4th with 80.8%. Oklahoma Christian College ranked sixth with 77.8%. No different non-public spiritual college appeared within the high 15.

Least Democratic was Oklahoma Wesleyan College the place 100% of recognized school have been Republican. At Southern Nazarene College, Oral Roberts College, and Mid-America Christian College, 25% or much less of the chosen school have been Democrats. After all, it could possibly be argued that these religious-based faculties are too far to the precise to symbolize Oklahoma values. However these establishments should not taxpayer-funded and they’re ideologically nearer to common Oklahomans than faculties on the opposite finish of the spectrum.

Partisan Donations

One other indication of partisan preferences or political ideology is donations to political candidates. Of the school Langbert and Stevens studied in 2020, solely about 20% made marketing campaign donations.¹⁵ So, the pattern measurement is simply too small to make distinctions between Oklahoma faculties. Nevertheless, the donations do present extra knowledge on the political leanings of school school in Oklahoma.

Donation knowledge can be found from each official sources and from organizations that mixture the info. FollowTheMoney.org is an simply searchable open-source database that collects and shows donations made by people.

Utilizing the identical listing of 1,290 school members and knowledge from FollowTheMoney.org, donations have been examined from 2008-2020. A complete of 180 school or 14.0% made donations. Mixed, they donated a complete of $215,155 to political campaigns in the course of the interval. As seen within the chart under, Democratic candidates obtained $169,464 or 77.7% of these {dollars}. Republican candidates got $48,552 or 22.3%.

College on the College of Oklahoma donated $21,703 to political candidates, of which 97.7% went to the Democrats. At Oklahoma State College, of $8,772 donated, 54% went to Democrats and 46% went to Republicans. An impartial candidate obtained $100, lower than 1% of the mixed complete donated to political campaigns.

Conclusions

Celebration registration is just not an ideal illustration of political ideology. Nevertheless it does present a strong foundation for evaluating college school throughout the state and producing a rating. Mixed with partisan donations, these outcomes reinforce the findings of earlier researchers.

Not surprisingly, school at Oklahoma’s flagship universities observe the identical partisan leanings as these discovered across the nation. Oklahoma college students and households preferring a unique strategy, do have various choices. Curiously, nevertheless, three of Oklahoma’s spiritual establishments have been within the high six of Democratic leaning school and a number of other smaller public faculties have been within the high 10.

[Note: Farmer and Roberts are scheduled to discuss the findings in this paper at the annual meeting of the Oklahoma Political Science Association on November 10-11, 2022.]

¹ Smith, Bruce L. R., Jeremy D. Mayer, and A. Lee Fritschler. “A lot Ado about Little: Pupil Views on Classroom Bias.” In Closed Minds?: Politics and Ideology in American Universities, 138–62. Brookings Establishment Press, 2008. http://www.jstor.org/steady/10.7864/j.ctt127zd8.11

² Horowitz, David, and Eli Lehrer. “Political Bias within the Administrations and Colleges of 32 Elite Schools and Universities” Heart for the Research of Well-liked Tradition, 2003. https://studentsforacademicfreedom.org/stories/political-bias-in-the-administrations-and-faculties-of-32-elite-colleges-and-universities

³ Rothman, Stanley, et al. “Politics and Skilled Development amongst School College.” The Discussion board, vol. 3, no. 1, 2005. https://doi.org/10.2202/1540-8884.1067

⁴ See Mariani, Mack D., and Gordon J. Hewitt. “Indoctrination U.? College Ideology and Modifications in Pupil Political Orientation.” PS: Political Science and Politics 41, no. 4 (2008): 773–83. http://www.jstor.org/steady/20452310

⁵ Langbert, Mitchell, and Sean Stevens. “Partisan Registration of College in Flagship Schools.” Research in Increased Schooling, vol. 47, no. 8, 2021, pp. 1750–1760. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1957815

⁶ Mariani, Mack D., and Gordon J. Hewitt. “Indoctrination U.? College Ideology and Modifications in Pupil Political Orientation.” PS: Political Science and Politics 41, no. 4 (2008): 773–83. http://www.jstor.org/steady/20452310

⁷ Hazelwood Sch. Dist. v. United States, 433 U.S. 299 (1977). https://supreme.justia.com/circumstances/federal/us/433/299/

⁸ Calculated from the Oklahoma State Election Board. “Me Reg Stats Cnty (VR2030) – Oklahoma.gov.” Month Finish Registration Statistics by County, 30 Sept. 2022. https://oklahoma.gov/content material/dam/okay/en/elections/voter-registration-statistics/2022-vr-statistics/vrstats-county-sept-2022.pdf

⁹ Oklahoma State Election Board. “For Electors for President and Vice President.” 2020 OK Election Outcomes. https://outcomes.okelections.us/OKER/?elecDate=20201103

¹⁰ Leip, David. “OK Election Outcomes.” Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections. https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/index.html

¹¹ Langbert, Mitchell, and Sean Stevens. “Partisan Registration of College in Flagship Schools.” Research in Increased Schooling, vol. 47, no. 8, 2021, pp. 1750–1760. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1957815

¹² Oklahoma State Regents for Increased Schooling. “Salaries in The Oklahoma State System of Increased Schooling 2020-2021,” pg. 4. https://www.okhighered.org/studies-reports/faculty-salary/2020-21.pdf

¹³ Rothman, Stanley, et al. “Politics and Skilled Development amongst School College.” The Discussion board, vol. 3, no. 1, 2005. https://doi.org/10.2202/1540-8884.1067

¹⁴ Langbert, Mitchell, and Sean Stevens. “Partisan Registration of College in Flagship Schools.” Research in Increased Schooling, vol. 47, no. 8, 2021, pp. 1750–1760. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1957815

¹⁵ Langbert, Mitchell, and Sean Stevens. “Partisan Registration of College in Flagship Schools.” Research in Increased Schooling, vol. 47, no. 8, 2021, pp. 1750–1760. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2021.1957815