Do as I say, not as I do

Another Arts & Letters tipoff today. The teaser for the article reads:

"Do professors indoctrinate students by expressing a political ideology in the classroom?"

Similar to what I was talking about the other day when I was arguing that ideology leaks into economics courses when we start using them as civics lessons. The article being referred is from the Chronicle of Higher Education, asking why academia is liberal. Yesterday I reported a survey that found majority liberal political views among economics grad students; it's not controversial to suggest that university and college faculties are predominantly more liberal than the population.

The article also mentions the real source of the Arts & Letters teaser quote: a study by Matthew Woessner and April Kelly-Woessner called, delightfully, "My Professor is a Partisan Hack" (you can read the whole study (pdf) here). That study tried to figure out how students perceive the political leaning of their professors, and how similarity with the students' own views affected their enjoyment and perception of their courses.

The authors asked students to complete course evaluations that, among other questions, asked them to identify their professors' political and ideological views, and to report their own confidence in their answers. The surveys were all done after political science courses. The Chronicle article summarizes one of the big results:

"their research showed that students were turned off when professors expressed views that were contrary to their own..."

Perhaps not surprising. The article goes on:

"Mr. Maranto asked the Woessners to contribute a chapter to his book on why conservatives don't pursue doctorates. Typically, he says, there are a few answers to the question. Liberals say conservatives want to make more money than professors earn, while conservatives argue that they get less encouragement from professors than liberal students do."

I would love to do a similar study for economics courses. Some interesting questions:

• Can students confidently identify political ideology of economics professors? Should they be able to, given the supposed neutrality of what we teach?
• Would students correctly guess that the majority of economists identify themselves as liberal? Does the content of economics courses skew this perception of the professors' beliefs?
• Are non-conservatives turned off by economics courses?
  
• Do students see economics professors as spreading ideology? If so, is the ideology consistent with the professors' beliefs? Is it consistent with the students' perception of the professors' beliefs?

We need to know how the teaching of economics meshes with the students beliefs and opinions. I strongly believe that the economic method is capable of accommodating and being used by people of any political or ideological belief, but I'd be astonished if such a survey of economics students revealed that this was in fact the case.

Here's my pitch: do economics professors indoctrinate students by expressing ideology in the classroom? If they do, I believe they are committing a far graver sin than political science professors who do the same. We can separate policy debate from opinion in economics; we can separate out method from our beliefs. Do we?

The Woessner article concludes:

"professors may be well advised to strive for political balance—vigorously challenging students’ viewpoints and presenting multiple perspectives without identifying their own political orientations."

If we could accomplish something like this in economics - value-free and varied economic method, plus lively ideological debate on economic policy - we might get economics courses that are interesting, useful and diverse. That would beat the mangling of positive and normative economics that too often passes for a real economics course.