As parents saw their college students head back to campus this month, many may have worried about what their children may be exposed to. These concerns are understandable given the recent suspicion directed at higher education. Nearly every time I open social media these days, I find accusations that university professors are indoctrinating students and turning them into left-wing extremists. As a professor myself, I’ve been stunned to learn that I have this kind of power. Had I known I had the power to indoctrinate students, I would have started doing so a long time ago, but only to convince them to do the assigned reading before class.

But the news doesn’t end there. Apparently, universities are engaged in a conspiracy to drive impressionable young Americans away from the values and beliefs with which they were raised. This, too, came as an immense surprise. I once attended a faculty meeting in which my colleagues argued bitterly about whether a series of new classrooms should have chalkboards or whiteboards, so I was amazed to learn that there are institutions where faculty members are like-minded enough to engage in such a vast and devious plan. Please tell me where they are. I bet their faculty meetings are shorter.

The truth, though, is far less amusing. Higher education isn’t radicalizing students. Americans are doing a fine job radicalizing themselves at home. The recipe is simple: join social media groups and subscribe to online news sources filled with people who think exactly like you and spend all day in those spaces blasting political polemics into your eyeballs. This approach to radicalization works far better than going to class. A study by MIT researchers found that false news spreads six times faster than truth on social media, thanks to algorithms that reward outrage over accuracy. These platforms create echo chambers that make it extremely difficult for people to hear other perspectives. It’s radicalization without all the pesky homework that comes with higher education.

The posts I see on social media are wrong. Universities aren’t the problem. In fact, higher education is an antidote to growing American extremism. We need citizens with critical thinking skills, the ability to evaluate ideas, and the capacity to distinguish credible news from propaganda. We also need widespread knowledge of history, civics and science. These things can be difficult to come by on your own, but I have good news: Colleges and universities are filled with people passionate about passing on this knowledge. I know this because they are my colleagues and because I see how hard they work to teach and mentor young people into becoming informed citizens.

Yes, universities challenge students to think critically about the world, and sometimes that means questioning long-held beliefs. But that isn’t indoctrination — it’s education. The difference lies in empowering students to arrive at their own conclusions, not prescribing a specific ideology. And while I am sure there are small numbers of professors who care more about preaching politics than teaching students, I rarely encounter them, and I’ve found they exist on both sides of the political spectrum. I have never seen anything close to a vast left- or right-wing conspiracy on campus. We’re all far too busy grading exams.

An alarming number of Americans believe truly outrageous things. People in our communities believe the government is manufacturing hurricanes. They believe that the COVID vaccines contain microchips. They are convinced that elementary schools are performing sex reassignment surgeries without parental permission. During the pandemic, there were even people who believed that Tom Hanks eats babies. Tom Hanks! I haven’t conducted a formal survey, but I feel confident not one of those ideas is being promoted by a college or university.

Americans are indeed being radicalized in devious ways, but it isn’t happening on campuses — it’s happening in our homes. We should be enormously troubled by the implications of that new reality. Unless people realize that they are the source of their own extremism, log off their social media apps, and work diligently to deprogram themselves, I worry that reasonableness in American politics will become a relic of the past. Unless we confront the forces fueling extremism in our own homes, we risk losing not only the center in politics but also the shared reality that makes democracy possible. The good news is that the tools to rebuild this shared reality — education, critical thinking and respectful dialogue — are well within reach. I see them on campus every day.

Tracy Hresko Pearl is a native Marylander and the William J. Alley Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma where she researches and writes about law and technology.