"The cloistered world of the campus"

In his book Economic Facts and Fallacies Thomas Sowell writes an absolutely devastating critique of academia. In a 36 page chapter entitled Academic Facts and Fallacies Sowell analyzes many facts and fallacies about faculty, teaching, educational quality, academic careers, choices for students, cost of college, academic finances, revenues, and discrimination. The education of students appears to be very low on the list of priorities of many American colleges and universities.

One area that interests me is the huge disparity in faculties between Democrats and Republicans. Sowell writes "It is not uncommon for the ratio of Democrats to Republicans to be dozens to one in some faculty departments, even though supporters of the two parties are relatively evenly divided in the country at large. Although the reasons for this situation may be ideological, the consequences are educational. Students who go through college without ever having confronted a vision of the world very different from that of a narrow band of views among their professors have little opportunity to develop their own ability to analyze conflicting arguments - as they will have to do after leaving the cloistered world of the campus."