What Universities (Say They) Teach: The Spread of Progressive Language in College Course Catalogs
Critics of the modern university system contend that these institutions have shifted their mission from the pursuit of truth to the promotion of social justice; yet systematic evidence on what universities teach is scarce. In this report, I measure curricular language directly, applying two fixed keyword lists to the titles and descriptions of 7.3 million course-year records from 111 universities between 2000 and 2025. One list covers progressive themes such as race, gender, identity, equity, and social justice; the other covers the authors, texts, and traditions of the Western canon. The share of courses using progressive language more than doubles, from 4.8% to 10.8%, while the Western-canon share drifts from 4.8% to 4.4%. Scaling by catalog length sharpens the contrast: progressive words per 100 catalog words rise by 118%, and canon words fall by 23%. The progressive course share rises in every broad academic area and more than triples in professional schools. The increase persists among universities observed throughout the period. Universities differ widely, and the differences survive adjustment for catalog length and field composition.
Introduction
On January 15, 1987, Jesse Jackson joined a Stanford campus march over the university’s Western Culture course requirement. Demonstrators chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture’s got to go!”[1] In March 1988, the Faculty Senate approved reforms that replaced Western Culture with Cultures, Ideas and Values, broadening the curriculum’s treatment of minority perspectives and questions of race, class, and gender.[2] The episode drew national attention, but little is known about how curricula have changed since.
Since then, researchers have learned much more about who teaches than about what is taught. Studies based on party registration and self-reported ideology find a pronounced and increasing leftward tilt among university faculty, especially in the humanities and social sciences.[3] Whether those preferences shape what universities teach is much less clear, because evidence on course content is scarce and rarely comparable across institutions or over time.[4] This report measures that content directly, using the language of university course catalogs.[5]
