Americans’ Confidence In Higher Education Still Slipping, Survey Finds
Only 36% of Americans believe that higher education “is fine” as it is now, a five percentage-point decline from just a year ago. That’s one of the top-line findings of a new survey released this week by New America, the progressive think tank.
The latest, eighth edition of Varying Degrees assesses how Americans think about higher education along several dimensions, including college value, funding, and accountability. The findings are based on a sample of 1,705 adults selected from NORC’s (formerly the National Opinion Research Center) AmeriSpeak Panel.
Americans’ growing unhappiness with the current state of higher education was also revealed by the fact that in 2024 73% of them believed that higher ed offers a good return on investment, down from 82% who felt that way in 2017. In addition, only 54% of Americans think that higher education is having a positive impact on the way things are going in the country today, a 16 percentage-point drop since 2019.
The news was not all bad, however. A majority of Americans still perceive there’s value in earning a postsecondary credential and would like to see increased state and federal funding to help make college more affordable.
In addition, more than 70% of adults want their children or family members to earn at least some postsecondary education, and more than 75% believe associate and bachelor’s degrees are worth it even if they require students to borrow money to attend college.
Public community colleges fared better than four-year institutions in terms of the public’s opinion about whether they were worth the cost. More than three-quarters of the respondents (78%) believed community colleges were worth their cost compared to 65%, 52% and 37% who felt that way about public four-year universities, private, nonprofit four-year institutions, and for-profit schools, respectively.
Despite recent evidence that, after adjusting for inflation and taking financial aid into account, the net costs of attending college are decreasing, the survey found that 87% of respondents believe that “Americans are deciding not to attend college mainly because they can’t afford the cost of college.” There was little difference between Republicans (86%) and Democrats (90%) who felt this way about affordability.
Democrats and Republicans were sharply divided about who should bear the major responsibility for funding higher education. Nearly eight out of ten Democrats (78%) believe the government should fund higher education because it is good for society, while 67% of Republicans believe that students should pay for higher education because they personally benefit from it.
There was also a big difference between Baby Boomers and other generations on this question. The majority of members of Generation Z, Millennials, and Generation X all believe that the government should bear the primary responsibility for funding higher education, while a majority of Baby Boomers believe that students should.
Still, about seven of ten Americans agree that states should spend more tax dollars on public two- and four-year colleges and universities; 89% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans agree.
Among other finding, the survey found that:
- 85% of Democrats and 66% of Republicans said candidates’ stance on higher education affordability will be important to their votes in this fall’s elections;
- More than 90% of Americans believe that it’s important that colleges and universities provide publicly available data on key indicators of quality, such as graduation rates, graduates’ employment rates, and earnings;
- Between two-thirds and three-quarters of Americans, including both Republicans and Democrats, agree that institutions should lose access to taxpayer dollars if their students have poor outcomes, such as low graduation rates, low rates of earning a living wage, high rates of earning less than the average high school graduate, and low rates of paying down their student loans.
- The majority of Americans do not believe that colleges spend their money wisely. While public community colleges were perceived the most favorably on this question, only 45% of adults believed they spent their money wisely. That percentage was substantially lower for public four-year (34%), private, nonprofit (34%) and for-profit institutions (26%).
- Likewise, fewer than half of Americans believe colleges and universities are run efficiently. Community colleges fared best on this question, with 45% of adults agreeing they are run efficiently. But the numbers were lower for all other kinds of institutions – 39% for public four-years, 37% for private, nonprofit four-years, and 31% for for-profit schools. In general, Republicans were more skeptical than Democrats that institutions were operated efficiently.
The Varying Degrees report, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is just the latest study to reveal conflicting public attitudes about higher education, with majorities expressing increasing frustrations about it, while simultaneously acknowledging the value of earning a postsecondary degree.
According to the report, the “findings show that even when Americans’ confidence in the state of higher education might be shaky, hope is not lost” if institutions begin to address the issues of access, affordability and accountability.
Quoted in Inside Higher Education, Sophie Nguyen, the lead author of the report, said,“Americans want things to change, but nothing has. They want to believe that higher education is a way to get social mobility and financial security in this country. But it no longer feels accessible for a lot of Americans.”
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