Greg Bales

College Values

A report released last month by Public Agenda and the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education revealed that, despite its importance, a majority of Americans are increasingly skeptical of higher education. While people perceive college as essential, they also see it as increasingly exclusive and out of reach; the public believes that significantly more could be done to increase enrollment without sacrificing educational quality, despite colleges’ and universities’ claims to the contrary.

There are good reasons to believe that the public doesn’t know what it’s talking about. One of those reasons I wrote about last year when I observed that, nationally, institutions of higher learning are already increasing enrollment and cutting costs, but they are doing so by phasing out tenure-track faculty.¹ Of course, replacing tenure-track faculty with non-tenure-track faculty does not necessarily mean a drop-off in quality—I know many visiting professors who are excellent teachers and researchers—but the gate is wider, the way quicker, and the toll higher: those who are on the instructor-track struggle as much or more than the family working three jobs to pay for a daughter’s tuition.

The survey may also reflect general discontent with the direction of the country. The more dissatisfied people are with the way things are, the more valuable education becomes as a goal, but the harder it seems to get. This chart correlates well with public “direction-of-the-country” polls such as Newsweek’s:

Nevertheless, the report warns:

This does not mean that the public is actively hostile to higher education, but it does suggest that the public may not be especially sympathetic to the internal problems of the higher education system either. Our findings suggest, in other words, that the public may be poised in a period of ambivalence and perhaps unpredictability toward the financial difficulties of higher education. (My emphasis)

In fact, A 2009 Des Moines Register Iowa Poll found 64% of Iowans happy to cut university budgets. Iowa, it would appear, is already skeptical.²

¹ Soon after I wrote that post, Neil improved the charts significantly, without recreating the error of scale. If I could find his versions to link to, I would. Here it is. Anyway, I hope soon to update that post with 2009 data; when I do, I will add a link here.

² For more on Iowa’s skepticism, see Brian Morrelli’s Press-Citizen story on the future of the University of Iowa.