Over at National Review, Michael Strain notes that confidence in higher education has declined considerably over the past few years. But he says it's not just because of Republicans:
Universities are bleeding support among Americans who identify as Democrats and independents as well. In 2023, universities had the confidence of only 59 percent of Democrats and around one-third of independents. Universities lost the support of around one in ten Democrats and three in 20 independents from 2015-2023.
Large reductions in the shares of independents and Democrats who are confident in universities rules out partisanship as a comprehensive and sufficient explanation for the fact that universities are bleeding support from Americans at large.
In the main, the problem lies with universities themselves.
Let's look at the numbers. Strain links to a Gallup poll which tells us that the share of people with high confidence in higher education has dropped from 48% to 36% over the past five years. That's a decline of about a quarter.
Now take a look at this:
Confidence in everything has dropped since 2018. GSS asks only about "education," not "higher education," but confidence has dropped by about a quarter, exactly the same as in the Gallup poll. So this is probably a pretty good proxy.
Education is right in the middle of the pack. There's absolutely nothing special going on there. As for why confidence has dropped across the board, that's a mystery. Maybe COVID has something to do with it? Or perhaps it's the constant conservative drumbeat about how America is going down the tubes. No one knows for sure.
I think it's because every single part of every single thing has been politicized and the average person has actually noticed.
How has Congress remained dead even? Is it because it couldn't get any lower?
Pretty much. Congress's approval rating is around 15% and has been in that area for more than a decade.
Too lazy to try to dig it out of the General Social Survey, but lots of surveys ask about Congress.
Gallup shows confidence in Congress at 7% in 2022 - a drop of 5 points from 2021. So, yeah, it's running out of confidence to lose. https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-institutions-down-average-new-low.aspx
The widespread politicization of everything probably does play a pretty large role, although there are also some specific issues with higher ed that can make people unhappy. If you're conservative, you hate that education is "woke." If you're liberal, you hate that conservative politicians are pushing out DEI and that universities are beings run like a "business." If you have to pay for college, you hate the massive student loans and high tuition costs. If you read major newspapers, you're aware of the ballooning costs of administration, the rising costs of luxury dorms, the diminishing financial returns of a degree, etc. And if you don't like sports, you're disgusted by how much money is spent on that.
Really, there's something for everyone to get mad about!
I was going to make a similar point. It's not clear what "confidence" means in this context, but I agree that it's likely "confidence" in colleges to deliver an education that's remotely accessible to anyone any longer without going into long-term debt peonage.
What most people don't understand, however, is what is driving those costs. Colleges are caught between a rock and a hard place trying to make higher ed accessible to as many people as possible, train them in fields that are in demand today, while also making it affordable. That's a tough circle to square. Student services, mental health counseling, Title IX and ADA stuff -- that all contributes to making college work for students that need some extra help navigating a complex institution, but requires more administration and staff. Back in the day, delivering a basic liberal arts education was pretty cheap. English lit, history, political science -- those departments don't cost a ton to support. But students these days want Econ, Business, and STEM fields and those *do* cost a lot -- both in faculty salaries that have to compete with the private sector as well as investments in insanely expensive lab equipment, computer equipment, etc. Luxury dorms (aka dorms that meet modern fire and structural safety standards), climbing walls, athletics, and the like are way, way down on the list of what makes a modern college education so damn expensive.
oh my, what could it be?
Not just that, but deliberate, focused attacks on the trustworthiness of the Federal government, science (lately, climate science), medicine (Covid-19 vaccines), the press, the entertainment industry ….
What might have caused a downturn in public confidence in higher education? Rapidly rising tuition, the student loan debt debacle that has festered and grown over the past two decades, the takeover of most universities by the business model leading to increases in administrators and dwindling tenure track positions for wannabe professors (with attendant reliance for as much as three-quarters of undergraduate courses on TA's and adjunct faculty), the absurd escalation of the importance of college sports (and no one even tries to tell us anymore that those thousands of players are really students), with their attendant high finance TV and sports gear deals making them look like what they are: farm teams for the pros. Did I miss anything? Maybe also a strong backlash against higher ed by the MAGA set, which favors insurrection, trucks, and beer, eyeing higher education as a bunch of know-it-all, pearl-clutching eggheads.
America is in decline. Widespread decadence (pot stores everywhere, sports gambling encouraged on TV, fast driving, mocking the disabled, etc.) means we are falling.
The whole decadence trope is really tired.
Yup.
So you see actual things wrong and you blame... pot stores?
No. ESPN.
Not going to talk about the increase for organized labor?
Taken all together, I see these all as indicative of a loss of trust in institutions because they've failed to protect regular people from the predations of capitalism. The confidence in organized labor is only up because the unions in the news are opposing plutocratic interests (e.g., Amazon, Starbucks, perhaps even the whole movie studios thing). Or perhaps that boost is entirely due to the WGA and SAG strikes last year and is only temporary.
Another poll that insults our intelligence, conducted purely to give its sponsors material to write clickbait about. It's disappointing to see Kevin take the bait.
Firstly, pretending the massive, diverse network of institutions that collectively comprise "higher education" can be the subject of any meaningful one-word opinion is ludicrous. It's as silly as asking if someone has confidence in America's lawyers.
And secondly, confidence in it to do what? Teach useful employment skills? Reinforce "American values"? Fight wokeness? The survey doesn't say. In the absence of any information about what respondents believe higher ed is FOR, the data is worthless.
Very well put, and 100% accurate, inho.
I wonder how the ratio of yards gained to dollar have changed ...
I'm quite hopeful based on the "Supreme Court" and "Organized Religion" bars. Americans are becoming more skeptical of any one or thing that says "I have it figured out. Follow me....."
While I agree with commenters above that there are many reasons to be disappointed with universities, this is one of those questions whose explication requires more granularity:
Could it be that MAGA - listening to Desantis et al rant - learned to hate universities and that produced most of the change? Kevin has repeatedly pointed something like this out for views on the economy; seems like could be the same thing.
It's like the polls that said 50% of people hated Obamacare when 15% of them were folks who thought it wasn't expansive enough.
I think you miss the point, Kevin.
Yes, things have become politicized, but NOT by the same amounts. Conduct matters.
Organized labor has mostly conducted itself well over the past 20 years. There were a variety of (often good) reasons why it was so despised by the generation that fought WW2 and on through the 80s. But better conduct – and the public has noticed!
Likewise there are obvious specific reasons for each of the other cases. Noteworthy in particular is that Banks (even after a lot of beating up) and Congress (endless, frequently insane, beating up) are not doing as badly as Education. This was not inevitable, and to claim that "it's just the tenor of the times" is the same as saying "I do not want to look at and engage with the reasons why Education has gone down in the public esteem".
We all know why it has gone down. Get real. There's no point in me laying out the argument because the usual shock troops will swoop in to claim their usual ad hominem attacks. But the facts are the facts (including those facts about loss of support among Democrats and Independents).
It's fashionable to ignore Twitter (at least when Twitter says things you don't want to hear) but Twitter over the past few days has thrown up some very interesting things about Higher Ed, starting with the utter contempt Harvard "proper" has for Harvard Extension and, more specifically, for its students. Mark my words: this is going to be crystallized by some political entrepreneur into something with a very long shelf life... Don't forget that Nixon's entire career was driven by fury at the endless contempt he was shown by "the elite", starting with his experience at college. Like the Bourbons, the US elite (or more precisely a very particular fraction of them, but it's a fraction with disproportionate influence over culture, media, and the arts) have, since Nixon, forgotten nothing and learned nothing.
Trump was good at harnessing resentment but is not any particular sort of genius, political or otherwise. But the US will produce somewhat smarter, a Nixon2 (see Poilievre in Canada as a starting point)...
If you live under a rock and aren't familiar with what I'm saying, a short summary (follow the links) is present in the first section of
https://stratechery.com/2024/the-new-york-times-ai-opportunity/
Meanwhile a second front has opened up with Bill Ackman's threat to burn down MIT via plagiarism investigations. Obviously the immediate threat results from the (unbelievably stupid and shortsighted attempt by "journalists") to try to attack him by attacking his wife and, yes, KIDS – I mean, my god, harrassing a billionaire's kids – where do you think that is going to lead. But Ackman also has a reason for choosing MIT precisely because it's a highest tier research university and we cannot afford to lose it to academic faddism, in a way that just doesn't matter if the lunatics take over, say, Oberlin.
Points are
- Education brought this on itself. Refusal to engage with that fact, or to understand honestly what has happened, will not end well.
- The disapproval numbers are, I assume, from BEFORE the Palestinian/Anti-Semitism explosion
- You think the numbers right now (post Palestine, post Claudine Gay) are bad; you ain't seen nuthin yet...
I predict Ackman's attack with be forgotten in 5 days.
Except Labor. That's a good trend.