State university students, employees report greater comfort expressing views

The Iowa Board of Regents listens to a presentation on April 24, 2024. (Photo by Brooklyn Draisey/Iowa Capital Dispatch)

The second round of an Iowa Board of Regents-led free speech survey saw higher percentages of students and employees saying they feel comfortable expressing their opinions on campus.

Associate Chief Academic Officer Jason Pontius said the intent behind the first free speech survey was to establish benchmarks for how students and employees feel about offering their ideas and opinions at their universities. It was originally developed by a “cross-institutional group of university researchers and other administrators” and board staff and conducted in fall 2021. With the new survey, they can now compare to see how beliefs have changed.

The second survey, conducted from Jan. 31-March 1 of this year, received fewer responses but showed larger percentages of respondents agreeing with statements about their schools having an environment where they can freely speak on their beliefs and their personal comfort with doing so.

Pontius, who gave a presentation Wednesday at the regents board meeting, said the questions were almost identical between the two surveys.

Only 7.5% of surveyed students responded to the second iteration of the survey, down from 10.2% in 2021. Graduate and first-year students made up almost half of the respondents, followed by juniors, seniors and sophomores.

The first survey saw more seniors participate, which Pontius said could have to do with them having seen the survey before and deciding not to take the second one.

More than a third of surveyed employees gave responses, similar to the first survey’s results.

While the group of student respondents is smaller than in 2021, Pontius said their demographics do line up with the larger student body. For undergraduates, he said 77% of the group was white, 4% were Asian and 3% were Black. The total population of Asian and Black students attending state universities is identical, he said, and 73% of students are white.

“Those are all very close to what we’re seeing in the survey responses, which gives us a fair degree of confidence that we’re generally representing the overall student body, even though we do have a response rate that’s below 10%,” Pontius said.

The demographics of the employee sample size were also similar to the overall group, Pontius said.

Across the board, the majority of student respondents said they feel comfortable sharing their opinions both inside and outside of the classroom. The number of students who reported feeling comfortable expressing their opinions as it relates to course material grew by almost 10 percentage points to 87%, and those who felt comfortable expressing their opinions outside of the classroom grew by almost 7 percentage points to 80.4%.

A larger percentage of students agreed that their universities create “an environment for the free and open expression of ideas, opinions and beliefs,” according to the survey results, jumping from 72.5% in 2021 to 83% in 2023.

Iowa State University saw the highest proportion of positive responses, with 88.3% of the college’s respondents agreeing with the statement, and the University of Northern Iowa saw 85.5% of its participants agree. Just over three-quarters of University of Iowa respondents felt that the university provides space for expressing their opinions.

Just under 80% of student respondents agreed that their university “does not restrict speech on campus, even when it makes people feel uncomfortable,” almost 13 percentage points higher than in 2021.

Employees also reported higher rates of comfort with expressing their opinions, from 68.7% in 2021 to 76.9% in 2024. Rates of positive responses were similar across all three universities. Just under 74% of respondents agreed that their university doesn’t bar speech on campus, an increase of 10 percentage points.

One area where student respondents reported lower rates of agreement than in 2021 is their self-perception of how often they seek out people with differing opinions or beliefs. Students who strongly agreed with the statement dropped by almost 10 percentage points to 32.1%, and the amount of those who somewhat agreed only increased by a couple of percentage points. There was a higher number of responses disagreeing with the statement.

More respondents believed that other students do seek out opposing viewpoints, with those somewhat agreeing rising from 28.4% to 33%. Those who somewhat disagreed, however, came in at 32.8%.

Pontius said the past responses conveyed that people thought they were better at listening to different views than others, and this year’s survey shows they are less likely to have such a large disparity between their beliefs.

“What we saw in this survey is, I think, a little bit of a movement toward the happy medium,” Pontius said.

A question from Regent David Barker led Pontius to confirm that these results can be described as “statistically significant,” as the data shows notable increases in positive responses from the previous survey based on similar samples.

Barker said it was good to hear these results and commended the work of the free speech committee, but cautioned against thinking the job of ensuring everyone feels comfortable speaking their mind on campus is over.

“There’s still work to be done, we’ve still got maybe on the order of a quarter or so students who feel that we’re not doing enough, but it’s great to see improvement,” Barker said.

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