My alma mater tops a list of the top 10 conservative colleges.

It seems to me that there are two obvious omissions: Hillsdale College and Grove City College.

As for W&L's ranking, I suspect it has more to with the students than with the faculty. While I recall there being a couple of conservative faculty members (which, come to think of it, might actually give W&L a more conservative faculty than most colleges), there were plenty of leftist ones as well.

This is probably a good time to make explicit what has been implicit in some of my previous postings--my political leanings. I consider myself to be a libertarian (note the small "l") rather than a conservative, but some who know me (e.g., my friend Brad Birzer at Hillsdale) think the term free market conservative is a better fit. Ironically, I grew up in a die-hard Democrat family and was not particularly libertarian (or conservative or whatever) while at W&L.

Hat tip to my colleague Gary Roseman for sending me the conservative colleges list.