The Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) published a new report last week titled Shaping the American Mind: the Diverging Influences of College Degrees and Civic Learning on American Beliefs aimed at gauging the impact of university education on graduates’ political opinions.  While we have no problem with the Institute pursuing this question, their methodology and analysis wouldn’t hold up in the academic institutions it seeks to criticize, much less in front of a skilled reporter.

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has somewhat of a track record for putting out questionable scholarship.  Two years ago we called out the Institute’s report on “Civic Literacy” for using an ideologically based questionnaire to argue for mandatory civics classes in public colleges and universities. 

In its latest report ISI argues that completing higher education makes an individual more likely to align with a set of issues from supporting same-sex marriage to opposing teacher-led prayer in public schools. 

Un-shockingly, ISI has been representing their findings to media sources like C-SPAN as “evidence” of campus indoctrination.  That claim is simply unsubstantiated by this report.  None of ISI’s research touched on what actually happens on campus or in the classroom.  Making the assertion that this statistical preponderance in one survey is evidence of malfeasance in the classroom is poor analysis if not downright misrepresentation.

A close examination of “scholarship” like this continues to make clear that the accusations of campus indoctrination are nothing more than the manufactured controversy we typically see out of ISI, David Horowitz and their allies.