Gallup just released a survey showing the percentage of people who consider college “very important” is at the lowest point since Gallup started surveying that question in 1978, Record-Low 31% Say College Education Is ‘Very Important’:
Three in 10 Americans (31%) think a college education is “very important,” four percentage points below last year’s reading, the previous low among the seven times Gallup has asked this question since 1978. As recently as 2013, more than twice as many U.S. adults (70%) said college was very important.
At the same time, the percentage of U.S. adults who say a college education is “not too important” has risen from 6% in 2013 to 29% today, while the percentage saying it is “fairly important” has increased from 23% to 39%.
In the earliest years of Gallup’s trend on this question, those considering a college education to be very important increased sharply from 36% in 1978 to 64% by 1985. In the past decade, the perceived importance of college has plummeted, with those saying it is very important now slightly below its 1978 starting point.
This year, Gallup’s Aug. 3-24 poll finds that the percentage of U.S. adults viewing college as “not too important” nearly matches those rating it “very important.” The 64-point gap between them in 2013 has shrunk to just two points today.
The feeling is very diverse:
The long-term decline spans major demographic groups, even as women, Democrats, people of color and college graduates remain relatively more likely than their counterparts to consider college very important.
This will surprise no one, except perhaps people in academia. It certainly won’t surprise Legal Insurrection readers, because we’ve been decrying the liberal campus bubble for almost two decades.
I recently spoke on this very topic last spring at Cornell Law School, Why have universities become the least free places when they should be the most free?
Why is it that universities have become the least free place in the United States when they should be the most free place?
And that’s what I think we have to examine. And it is absolutely true that higher education, certainly at the so-called elite level, has been captured by one political viewpoint.
The Cornell Sun, I think it was two or three years ago, maybe it was four, I’ve lost track of time at this point, did a couple of surveys and I credit them for this, It was actually a good piece of journalism, where they looked up the political donations of faculty. Now, political donations are not a perfect alignment with Viewpoint, but it’s a rough alignment. And they found, over varying years, and it varied from department to department, but something between 95 and 100 percent, approaching a hundred percent, of the donations from faculty went to Democrats. And there was another survey they did as to. I think, political registration based on voter records. And it was approaching 100 percent Democrat.
Is that a healthy status for a university?
I don’t care if you like Republicans or you don’t like Republicans, they represent about half the country. But on universities, they’re one, two, three percent of the faculty. That’s not a healthy situation.
And it’s least healthy for universities because universities depend, including Cornell as we all know, on public funding tremendously, even private universities. And you are creating a bubble that distances yourself from half the taxpayers who pay your bills, who pay for your classrooms, who pay for everything else through federal aid. It’s not healthy.
One reaction from academia would be to open up to other viewpoints, and in some places that is happening but mostly not. Culture is a hard thing to change, and the campus culture overwhelmingly is hostile to at least half the country.
People are noticing.
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