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Vassar College

Vassar College's course descriptions average 69.5 on the 100-to-0 ruler: clearly left of center. Across all 100 schools, the average is 67.5, so Vassar College reads 1.9 points further left.

Liberal (100)center (50)Conservative (0)
Vassar College: 69.5 (likely range 68.3 to 70.6) All 100 schools: 67.5 each other school in the comparison

Where its courses fall

3%Far left92–100
22%Left75–91
70%Center-left59–74
5%Center42–58
0%Center-right26–41
0%Right9–25
0%Far right0–8
243 plotted courses (the ones with a political framing). 100 = far left, 50 = the average American, 0 = far right.

See it for yourself

Underlined: words the model quoted from the description when we asked it, after scoring, to explain its score.

Furthest left

AFRS 110 · Prison Abolition and Black Liberation100

Ethnic & African American Studies

Semester Offered: Fall 1 unit(s) This course examines regimes of imprisonment and state violence that spawn carceral structures and the strategies of resistance racialized captives have used to disrupt and dismantle them. By calling into…

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POLI 284 · Temporality, Ecology, and Technoscience95

Political Science

Semester Offered: Spring 1 unit(s) (Same as STS 284 ) Drawing from decolonial ecologies, queer ecofeminisms, and other critical, ecosophical perspectives, this theory course engages the politics of ecology and technology insofar as these…

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AMST 208 · Demilitarizing the Pacific94

Ethnic & African American Studies

1 unit(s) (Same as ASIA 208 ) The Pacific euphemistically called "America's Lake" has been a site of US empire building and Indigenous and Asian resistance against US military expansion. This course examines demilitarization movements in…

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Furthest right

None. Vassar College has 243 left-framed courses and not one right-framed course.

Why this number, in plain words

Political lean of course descriptions. Average Framing score (0 = far right, 50 = center, 100 = far left) of the scored courses in the group.

50 is the survey-anchored center of US adults on each issue (the "moderate" place of the ANES/GSS/PRRI seven-label ruler), not the cohort midpoint; scores above 50 read leftward, below 50 rightward.

Counted: courses with a Framing score (categories L/R/B/C). The likely range (95% interval) is 68.3 to 70.6; a comparison whose range overlaps this one is not a reliable difference.

  • Most course descriptions carry no political lean at all and are not in this average; the "share described from the left" view counts them.
  • Readings are of catalog description text, not of teaching, syllabi or individual professors.
Vassar College by department (share of courses described from the left)
DepartmentLeft-framed shareCourses
Women's & Gender Studies51.2%43view
Sociology46.7%45view
Ethnic & African American Studies42.9%252view
Political Science32.4%74view
History32.2%87view
Anthropology18.9%53view
English & Comparative Literature18.1%83view
Religious Studies12.2%41view
Philosophy7.3%41view
Art & Art History7.2%83view
Psychology2.6%39view
Economics0%34view

Lean (mean Framing score) is not published per department within a school; only the left-framed share is. Department rows carry no interval.

Details: exact rows, definitions and method
NameMetricValue95% intervalnscored
Vassar Collegemean_bias_score69.568.3 – 70.6875243
All 100 schoolsmean_bias_score67.567.4 – 67.7124,29010,124
Formula
SUM(bias_score) / COUNT(bias_score)
Interval
normal approximation: mean +/- 1.96 * sd / sqrt(n), sample sd (n-1); undefined when n < 2
Model / prompt / snapshot
gpt-5.6-sol · r12 (2026-10-16-le49-r12) · 6df50b10
Metric caveats
Scored courses only (L/R/B/C); N and I carry no score and are excluded, so n here is smaller than the group's course count. Scores are model readings of catalog description text against a fixed anchored definition, not teaching or syllabi. The interval covers sampling noise in the mean only; it does not represent model reading error. Every value carries a `method` label: exact_rows or histogram_midpoint.

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