Failing history: How colleges neglect core U.S. principles

The report’s central findings confirm long-standing suspicions that university education fails to provide students with a well-rounded acquaintance with the fundamentals. At the University of Texas, 78 percent of the course sections through which students could fulfill the American history requirement devoted half or more of their readings to issues of race, class and gender; at Texas A&M, 50 percent of the courses did the same.

In Austin, 78 percent of faculty teaching the required courses in America history had research interests in the sub-specialties of race, class, and gender. Even in the more traditional milieu of College Station, known for its corps of cadets, nearly two-thirds of the relevant faculty members shared these identity politics niches.

Younger faculty were significantly more likely to have research interests in race, class, and gender: 83 percent of UT faculty members teaching the required courses who received their PhDs in the 1990s or later had research interests in race, class and gender; at A&M, the percentage was even higher — nine out of 10.

Furthermore, “special topics” courses were heavily skewed toward the study of race, class and gender.