Americans’ faith in the higher education system in the U.S. has declined significantly in the past five years, according to a new poll.
The survey from the Pew Research Center, released on Wednesday, found seven in 10 Americans feel the higher education system is “generally going” in the wrong direction, up from 56 percent who said the same in 2020.
The drop in positivity opinion has been reflected in college enrollment figures, with many Americans choosing to forego higher education amid concerns about tuition costs, student loan debt and worries about what is taught at universities.
It comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has targeted universities that he views as adversaries to his political agenda, with measures including slashing billions of dollars in federal money for institutions it accuses of antisemitism and liberal bias. The administration recently invited nine top universities to sign an ideological “compact” that would provide favorable access to funding in exchange for a wide range of commitments, including several around admissions, women’s sports and free speech.
The survey, conducted among 3,445 U.S. adults between September 22 and 28, found the dimming view of the higher education system cuts across all major demographics.
It found that 77 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say the higher education system is going in the wrong direction, while 65 percent of Democrats and those who lean Democrat said the same.
For both sides, the share of those who share that view has gone up by at least 10 percentage points since 2020.
The survey also found that a majority of Americans don’t believe colleges are doing a good job in other areas.
A majority (79 percent) say colleges and universities are doing a “fair” or “poor”—the two lowest ratings on a scale ranging from “poor” to “excellent”—job of keeping tuition costs affordable, according to the poll.
More than half (55 percent) gave “fair” or “poor” ratings when asked how well colleges and universities are preparing students for well-paying jobs. Forty-nine percent gave “poor” or “fair” ratings when asked about whether colleges were developing students’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills, while 45 percent said colleges do a “fair” or “poor” job of exposing students to a wide range of opinions and viewpoints.
But higher education scored the highest marks when asked about research, with a majority of Americans (55 percent) saying that colleges and universities were “excellent,” “very good” or “good” when it came to advancing research and innovation.
Aria Razfar, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Education, previously told Newsweek that universities “must shift their curriculum towards uniquely humanistic skills that require empathy, creativity, and physicality. Artificial intelligence will inevitably replace many jobs that used to require a college degree or certification. However, it won’t be able to easily replace jobs and social roles that require empathy, creativity, and physicality. There needs to be a conscious shift towards this type of curriculum across institutions of higher learning.”
Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford University‘s Graduate School of Education, has said that the “evidence is clear that the actual importance of college remains high.”
Reardon said: ”The average college graduate today earns 75 percent more than the average adult with only a high school degree. Moreover, the importance of college is much higher now than in the 1960s-1990s.”