How it works
An AI model read every course description in 100 university catalogs and placed each one on a left-right ruler anchored to what Americans actually believe.
1. What we read124,290 course descriptions, word for word, from the 2024-25 catalogs of 100 universities, across 12 departments.
A catalog description is what a school publishes about a course. It is not a syllabus or a lecture, so this measures how schools describe their teaching, not everything said in a classroom.
Every school page shows real descriptions and links back to the catalog, so anyone can check them.
2. Two questions for every courseSubject: what political ideas does it study? Framing: what side does it take?
Studying an idea is not endorsing it. A course can study a conservative policy while criticizing it from the left.
Keywords, a mention or a department name do not count. The framing has to be in the text.
3. One ruler, anchored to real Americans
Each dot is one of the 95 anchor points. Anchors with the same score stack.
Each anchor is a political position. Its place on the ruler comes from survey data: how many Americans in each group hold it.
Example: one survey question, the share of each group that holds the position, and where that puts it.
Dots: survey groups at their ruler places. Solid line: joined dots. Shading: support over 50%. Dotted: least-squares line (its slope × 100 is the lean).
4. Why most framed courses land at center-left
Most course descriptions take no political position. When one does adopt a lens, it is usually one that explains outcomes through structure: discrimination, inequality or power. Survey evidence places views like these at center-left, because liberals hold them and most moderates agree. So the cluster of Framing scores in the 60s and 70s reflects the descriptions themselves, not a tilt in the ruler.
We tested this in November 2026. We added finer reference points for explanatory framing, at 83, 50 and 17, each placed by the same survey rule. Then we scored 400 courses from 12 departments with both versions on the same day. The finer version spread scores out, but only by moving strongly framed courses further left. No course moved right of center under either version. The finer version also made mirrored left- and right-leaning test texts less symmetric, and an independent model from a different company agreed with it less. We kept the current reference points because they measure the same pattern more consistently.
5. Taking no side is not the centerA course with no political framing gets no score at all. 50 means a position the average American holds, or a genuinely balanced treatment.
Three different things can earn a 50: a commitment that matches the center, opposing views given equal weight, or political content with no direction.
A description with too little information to judge gets no score. It is never counted as 50.
6. Fixed and checkableThe prompts and the scored run are frozen. Every number traces back to a scored course, and every anchor traces back to its survey.
Left-leaning scores must be above 50 and right-leaning scores below 50. Invalid answers are thrown out, never turned into scores.
The run behind this site is frozen; nothing is rescored after the fact.
The two prompts
Each course is read twice, with the same ruler and two different questions.
Check our work
Everything behind the numbers is public, so you can audit it yourself.
- Download every scored course (CSV): school, department, course code and title, the full catalog description, a link to the catalog, and its Subject and Framing scores. About 2,700 rows have a blank description because the catalog page we captured listed none.
- Read both prompts word for word (above) and run them on any course yourself.
- Open any anchor point below to see the survey it comes from and how it was placed on the ruler.
The 95 anchor points
These are the reference positions that pin the ruler to what Americans actually believe. Hover any anchor for its survey numbers. Click it for the full survey results and the chart that turns them into its place on the ruler.