Colleges aren't liberal-making factories

Open a newspaper or scan an opinion section, and you'll likely encounter a familiar storyline: American universities have become ideological factories, churning out graduates stamped with a single political worldview.

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Students are portrayed as disengaged, fragile, glued to screens and uninterested in real work or real relationships.

That narrative may fit some campuses. It does not describe my experience teaching a speech course this year at Roosevelt University in Chicago-the first college class I've ever taught. I'm an adjunct instructor, and my primary career is running a small business outside of academia, according to the Tribune News Service.

Roosevelt is labeled a “university,” but that label deserves scrutiny. It conjures images of leafy quads, students with trust funds and ideological monoculture. Roosevelt is something else entirely: a city college. Many of my students are commuters, more than half of them work part-time jobs and some work full time. They juggle school, family obligations and rent. Politics, for most of them, barely register.

Over an entire semester, I did not encounter political messaging in the classroom, in faculty meetings or in administrative directives. No one told me what to believe. No one told me what to teach politically. I wasn’t nudged, pressured or “educated” toward a particular ideology. I taught public speaking — how to organise thoughts, tell stories, persuade and listen.