HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: ‘Brown Is Completely Off the Table:’ Private counselors report that, since the election, more parents are ruling out their children applying to some colleges, based on political reputations.

The parents were distraught. Their daughter, a top student, had her heart set on a college that was, in their view, dangerously liberal, an institution to be avoided. They wanted options besides her daughter’s choice at the time … Yale University. This was the situation a private college counselor shared here at the annual meeting of the Higher Education Consultants Association, one of the two national associations for private counselors. Others in the audience nodded their heads in agreement. Parents were vetoing children’s choices based on the parents’ (not the would-be applicants’) perceptions of the campus political climate. The situation has gotten worse, many said, since last year’s election.

Well, it should.

UPDATE: A lot of people in the comments at Inside Higher Ed trying to pretend that this is about people on the right being close-minded. But there’s also this:

The lesson we get from this is: “Don’t trust guidance counsellors; they don’t know what they’re talking about and give bad advice.” I’m a Yale alum and a college professor, and I, in sadness, told my daughter not to apply to Yale last year. I discovered that Baylor, despite lower prestige, has an amazing Honors Great Books program and probably is better than Yale for any student, liberal or conservative, interested in the humanities. She did apply to U. Chicago and Princeton, but was rejected and so didn’t have to make a hard prestige decision. She was accepted to Hillsdale, Wash. U., St. Olaf’s, Carleton, Baylor, and Virginia, I think, but Hillsdale and Baylor were really the only contenders there. Quality of students, prestige, and intelligence of professors are three important criteria, but all college profs are pretty intelligent and how they use their brains in teaching dominates research reputation.

Indeed.