Both top-level administrators and PR representatives for universities often publicly decry the allegation that their institution indoctrinates its students by pushing political ideology on them. They claim that universities and higher education are all about knowledge. This is captured in the oft-repeated remark that the university “doesn’t teach you what to think but how to think.” Critical thinking skills, discipline-specific content, and the analysis of data are what universities are about, so say the d
The charge of “indoctrination” is typically made by avowed conservatives who have their own ideological agenda, and who lack an appreciation of the difference between doctrine and pluralistic education. It thus makes sense that university leaders would respond defensively to such a claim. But the assertion that higher education is only about the sharing of knowledge belies the history of American universities as public institutions, both in terms of the values upon which they were founded and their original
While there is a long history of church-based and seminary-linked universities (e.g., both Harvard and Yale at their inceptions), the public universities formed in the U.S. soon after the American Revolution were designed not only to educate but also to fulfill a sense of civic obligation: to nurture the values of democracy and to provide graduates with the skills necessary to serve as civic leaders who can help to solve community problems. This mission continued with the Merrill Land Grant universities, wh