Simple Country Physicist

Courtesy of "Uncertain Principles", Chad Orzel, [Link] I find out that the college academics are so politically correct that they are concerned over the liberal predominance of their own population. Indeed, they seem to have raised question on whether that bias (in a statistical sense, obviously) is compromising the value and quality of their work.

The root of this is a report [Link] by a couple of academics (of course!) entitled "Left Pipeline: Why Conservatives Don’t Get Doctorates". The first thing that strikes when one reads this report is that the declaration "Draft: Please do not cite without permission from the author" is promenant at the beginning of the document. Evidently permission of the author means something different to college academics than to the rest of the English speaking component of humanity?

The report is full of a overblown writing and what to a mere SCP is rather imprecise and unstated assumption ridden analysis. The contention is that "conservatives" are less likely to seek doctoral degrees than are liberals. Their characterization of conservatives and liberals:

• Liberalism is more closely associated with a desire for excitement, an interest in creative outlets,and an aversion to a structured work environment.
• Conservatives express greater interest in financial success and stronger desires to raise families.

seem to have rather little to do with what the dictionary definitions I trend to use and generally associate with the terms:

• Conservative· favoring free enterprise, private ownership, and socially conservative ideas.
• Liberal· favoring individual liberty, free trade, and moderate political and social reform.

Indeed, one is moved to substitute the terms for conservative and for liberal, in which substitution the report begins to make considerably more sense.

When I was an undergraduate I recall that all of my classmates wanted to attend graduate shul and most wanted to obtain a doctorate. None of us would have felt any correlation with the terms liberal and conservative. All of us viewed additional education as being practical and necessary to achieve what we desired. All of us were interrupted in some fashion by the Vietnam war and the need to earn a living and establish a family. None of us failed to obtain at least a Master’s degree and all but one were granted a doctorate although in half the cases not in the discipline we initially desired.

I should reinforce that all of us viewed a doctorate as a necessary aspect of what we wanted to accomplish. None of us had any illusions of an academic career. That perception was based on a very simple model. Every academic Ph. D. generates n new Ph. D.’s per year. If we take the carrer duration of an academic Ph. D. to be 30 years (assumption not greatly different from reality,) then that academic Ph. D. will generate 30n Ph. D.’s, only one of which will be able to replace the academic Ph. D. in academia.

Admittedly academia is growing a bit each year, but the impact on that 30n value is small unless n is very small (n <~ 1/15-1/30). hence the low probability of an academic career.

I should also comment that in those days wer were in the midst of Containment, we had a "Space Race", a technology competition that was recognized as such and generated requirement for Ph. D.’s in the non-academic marketplace. That requirement, I believe has largely abated.

Hence back to the report. What is striking is that realists (the report’s conservatives) get better grades and find their classes more satisfying and rewarding that idealists (report liberals) but fewer realists stay in shul for doctorates than do idealists. Cast in these terms the results indicate what might be considered common or "good" sense and not ant versus grasshopper behavior.

But contrary to what the report implies, I would observe that the "liberal" bias (again statistical in nature,) has impacted not just social studies and the other fuzzy disciplines but all of the academic environment’s production. If so, it seems we need not be surprised. After all, the great universities were first developed to promulgate religious dogma and in a modern sense that is what they continue to do.