So it's somewhat surprising that, when it comes to the political leaning of their instructors, those same institutions are anything but diverse.

Findings from a recent national study of political party affiliations of faculty members at 21 top-name institutions were stunning in the lack of diversity and near-uniform liberal leaning among those who shape the thinking of America's young adults.

What were some of the numbers? At Harvard, only 4 percent of the faculty were from conservative parties; at Cornell, 3 percent; Brown University, 5 percent; Penn State, 17 percent; Stanford University, 11 percent; the University of Colorado-Boulder, 4 percent; UCLA in Los Angeles, 6 percent; and at the University of California-Santa Barbara, 1 percent.

In many university departments such as English, history, sociology, political science and economics, researchers found only one or no conservative-leaning faculty members compared to several dozen on the left.

Many American parents, concerned about the education their sons and daughters will receive when they send them off to college, have to ask the question: Are these really institutions of higher learning, or of ideological programming? (Sources: American Enterprise magazine, Capitalism magazine, The Christian Science Monitor.)