But that doesn't mean there isn't bias, or that it isn't structural. Academia presents a unique incentive structure, and it isn't at all implausible that the incentives would appeal more to liberals than to conservatives.

In addition, academia has always been an old boys network. I seem to recall a weird, ancient ceremony involving cultlike robes, a hood being solemnly slipped around my neck, and blather about now being part of the "community of scholars."

Given the unique incentive structure, along with the old-boy-network tendency to uphold that incentive structure at any cost, and you have an environment that only a fool could expect to be ideologically neutral. The academy is there to propagate an intellectual tradition.

Perhaps the answer is for the conservatives to invent a method of signalling that can compete with academia.

An educated conservative would have a much easier time sliding into a career in business or finance

Unlike gov't and non profits - you actually have to produce something of value in business.

Wall street hires, retains and pays on very different criterion than academia. It is not how many presentations did you create/publish, but how much money did you bring in.

I am sure that much of what Legion says is true, but what he says might also cause the middle and the left to exit the schools for money and broader horizons.