On this blog, our website, and elsewhere, we have written frequently of the ideological atmosphere on campus, one that is far removed from the “marketplace of ideas” ideal.  From professors who dislike Evangelical Christians, to professors who try to indoctrinate students, to an incredibly hedonistic and increasingly leftist culture, the campus atmosphere is particularly noxious to Christian and conservative ideas.  Nevertheless, the skeptics continue to doubt.

Well, the evidence continues to roll in, this time from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s recent study entitled The Shaping of the American Mind.  The first major conclusion from this study is hardly surprising:

American colleges generally fail to significantly increase civic knowledge among their students, but they do influence student opinion on a narrow set of polarizing social issues.

When quizzed on basic civics, college graduates only answered four more questions correctly than high school graduates.  But a college education does make a person more likely to favor same-sex “marriage,” more likely to support abortion on demand, less likely to believe that people can succeed through hard work, less likely to favor school prayer, and less likely to believe the Bible is God’s Word. 

And this shift does not just occur among students.  If a person has taught at the college level, he is more likely to think that America corrupts otherwise good people, that the Ten Commandments are irrelevant today, and that homeschooling is bad than someone who has not.

In short, on far too many campuses today, education is out, and indoctrination is in.  In an environment that fosters a leftward creep among students and faculty, it is vitally important that Christian students and professors remain free to advocate their viewpoints openly and willing to do so boldly.