Americans Have Less Confidence in Higher Ed: Why? | Applying to College

Recent public opinion polls indicate that Americans’ confidence in higher education is dwindling, as is their faith in the Supreme Court, Congress, the presidency and other U.S. institutions.

Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans – 36% – report having a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to a Gallup report based on phone interviews of 1,013 adults representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia, conducted in June 2023. That confidence level is down from 48% in 2018 and 57% in 2015.

There was a decline across all demographics – especially among those who identified as Republicans, had no college degree or were 55 years or older – in terms of the percentages of these groups that said they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education.

Survey respondents who possessed either a college or postgraduate degree were among the most likely to express confidence in higher education, and observers say that’s because they’ve seen the value of it first-hand.

“They can speak with some certainty that pursuing postgrad education at all levels has a personal benefit to them,” says Jonathan Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, a Washington, D.C-based membership organization that works with higher ed institutions to shape public policy and promote innovate educational practices.

“I think it’s reasonable that those who have experienced higher education have more confidence and feel better about the post-secondary system,” Fansmith says. “Those who haven’t experienced that and haven’t seen those benefits for themselves may feel very strongly otherwise.”

Although those with a great deal or quite a lot of confidence among the youngest group surveyed (18 to 34) has fallen 18 percentage points since 2015, a Gallup and Lumina Foundation study found that about three-quarters of current and prospective college students surveyed in fall 2022 said a college education is equally or more important than it was 20 years ago.

“People are pretty positive about the value of postsecondary education as a concept,” says Stephanie Marken, partner of Gallup’s education division. “They generally believe that at least historically, higher education leads to a better job and a better life. That if you get a degree, most likely it’s the case that you’ll be more competitive in the job market and you’ll be more likely to have a job that really fulfills you. And yet, they also feel at the same time that they’re losing confidence in the institution that provides that outcome.”

While the Gallup poll did not ask respondents about why their confidence levels declined, some observers say those feelings may stem from multiple factors, including political division, total cost of attendance and difficulty gaining access to four-year institutions.

There is “the prevailing national rhetoric around college and university campuses as bastions of liberal progressivism that are brainwashing students to have an activist liberal agenda,” says Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, an organization focused on advancing equity within higher education. “And we’re hearing that from politicians, including Governor DeSantis in Florida, President Trump and other conservative leaders, who truly believe that liberal progressive attitudes in higher education are undermining not only the quality of education, but are un-American.”

The cost of attending a four-year college continues to rise. According to U.S. News data, the average cost of tuition and fees for the 2022-2023 year at ranked public colleges was $10,423 for in-state students and $39,723 at private colleges. For the same year, the average cost for out-of-state students at public colleges was $22,953.

“There are so many students who I hear from that say they limited which institutions they applied to because of issues of costs,” Marken says. “And they really counted themselves out of a lot of institutions that they actually probably would’ve gotten great funding from had they been admitted. But when they go onto the website and see the sticker price, it just feels so inaccessible, so impossible and too large of a financial burden to take on.”

To cover the cost of attending college, many students take out student loans. Graduates from the class of 2021 who took out student loans borrowed $29,719 on average, according to data reported to U.S. News by 1,047 colleges in an annual survey. That’s a 25% increase over 2009 in the amount students borrowed.

One reason that costs are high for students is that state investments have not kept up with demand or actual enrollment levels, says Stephanie Hall, acting senior director of higher education policy at the Center for American Progress, an independent policy institute based in Washington, D.C. Those costs that states and local jurisdictions used to cover get passed on to students, who then have to take on debt.

Fewer than 1 in 4 currently enrolled or prospective students, 23%, indicated in the 2022 Gallup and Lumina Foundation poll that they believe that all or most Americans have access to quality, affordable education after high school if they want it.

This is despite efforts, including federal programs such as the Pell Grant, to make a college education more affordable for everyone. The maximum amount of Pell Grant aid available to students from low-income households – which is $7,395 for the 2023-2024 year – hasn’t kept pace with need.

Some schools, like Williams College in Massachusetts and Davidson College in North Carolina, have tried to lower the cost barrier by implementing no-loan policies and meeting 100% of demonstrated financial need for students under a certain income threshold.

“Most Americans feel like higher education is inherently inaccessible and that it’s a closed system reserved for the very few and the very elite,” Marken says. “The Varsity Blues scandals didn’t help tremendously in that way because I think it really underscored this issue that a very select group of the U.S. population can get access to the most elite institutions and that continues to perpetuate. I worry a lot about that long term if it continues to be public perception that higher education is a closed system, that people will continue to opt out.”

New research shows that children from families in the top 1% of household income are more than twice as likely to attend elite institutions compared to those from middle-class families with similar standardized scores.

Marken says when people answer these questions about their confidence in higher education, they often “think about these very expensive four-year traditional programs that exist, and they’re not considering the many other options that are available in the market,” including community colleges and online education.

“We have to do a better job within the postsecondary education industry of marketing programs so that people understand the higher education as an institution doesn’t mean just a four-year degree,” she says. “It could mean so many other credentials and pathways.”

Some observers say all colleges need to be transparent about the real cost of attendance versus the sticker price, as well as the options available for aid, like college Promise programs. These programs, usually offered by local school districts or states, offer scholarships to eligible high school graduates in certain areas, often covering up to 100% of tuition and fees at local community colleges or universities.

However, the steadily rising cost of college still needs to be addressed in a “real way,” not just through tuition freezes, Marken says. “Because even holding tuition where it is still represents a significant increase over the last 10 to 15 years for most American families and still means higher education is out of reach for most Americans,” she adds.

Other solutions to affordability challenges are investing more in grant and work-study programs, which can reduce reliance on loans in a student’s financial aid offer, and establishing federal-state partnerships, Hall says.

“While states are a major funder of colleges, there’s also federal money on the table,” she says. This type of partnership would require states “to chip in a certain amount or to commit to investing a certain amount. Those kinds of programs are really promising for establishing debt-free college pathways. It does matter which state we’re talking about though: the politics in the state, the political will and the resources available. It’s kind of like having 50 different mountains to climb and every one is going to look different.”

There are also concerns about what students actually get for the considerable expense. Leslie Wright, a digital marketing freelancer based in Arkansas who worked 20 years before earning her bachelor’s from Berklee College of Music and master’s from Southern New Hampshire University, says a lot of textbooks used in classes seemed out of date.

“Especially in a digital world, in digital marketing and things that have to do with technology, these things change every three to six months,” she says. “I think with the confidence, students going into these kind of degrees, (feel) like, ‘Why would I want to read a textbook that’s five years old when I can Google the latest article and get the same information that I need?’ But it’s the people that I met (in college), the networking, that’s made everything worth it.”

Recent studies indicate that some employers and even college graduates themselves express concern that many graduate from college poorly equipped to succeed in the workplace. Colleges need to take seriously the importance of providing students with the 21st-century workforce skills needed for them to thrive post-graduation, Pasquerella says.

“We have not done that. We have reinforced this notion of higher education as existing within an ivory tower as a willful disconnect from the practical matters of everyday life,” she says. “People just don’t have the luxury of sitting around and thinking good thoughts. We have to talk about the ways in which that’s not what college does today. We’re actually preparing students with the skills that will help them in a world in which the challenges that we’re facing, from COVID-19 to global warming, require the capacity to apply the liberal (arts) learning that they get in college.”

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