Study Finds Increasing Number of Republicans and Independents Say Colleges are Bad for America
“there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction – even suspicion – among the public about the role colleges play in society”
Many Americans are losing faith in our system of higher education, mostly Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. It’s not hard to understand why. The left has controlled higher education for a long time, but in recent years, it has gone into Orwellian territory.
Colleges and universities have embraced social justice mobs, safe spaces, trigger warnings, preferred pronouns, and worse. Campuses which were once bastions of debate, now reject conservative voices, sometimes with violence.
Kim Parker writes at the Pew Research Center:
The Growing Partisan Divide in Views of Higher Education
Americans see value in higher education – whether they graduated from college or not. Most say a college degree is important, if not essential, in helping a young person succeed in the world, and college graduates themselves say their degree helped them grow and develop the skills they needed for the workplace. While fewer than half of today’s young adults are enrolled in a two-year or four-year college, the share has risen steadily over the past several decades. And the economic advantages college graduates have over those without a degree are clear and growing.
Even so, there is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction – even suspicion – among the public about the role colleges play in society, the way admissions decisions are made and the extent to which free speech is constrained on college campuses. And these views are increasingly linked to partisanship.
A new Pew Research Center survey finds that only half of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country these days. About four-in-ten (38%) say they are having a negative impact – up from 26% in 2012.
The share of Americans saying colleges and universities have a negative effect has increased by 12 percentage points since 2012. The increase in negative views has come almost entirely from Republicans and independents who lean Republican. From 2015 to 2019, the share saying colleges have a negative effect on the country went from 37% to 59% among this group. Over that same period, the views of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic have remained largely stable and overwhelmingly positive.
See the graphic in the tweet below:
The share of Americans saying colleges and universities have a negative effect has increased by 12 percentage points since 2012. The increase in negative views has come almost entirely from Republicans and independents who lean Republican. https://t.co/KHMpWNAV55 pic.twitter.com/MdmRJaAKfj
— Pew Research Center (@pewresearch) August 19, 2019
This is one of the reasons many conservatives oppose the idea of free (taxpayer-funded) college. Why should they fund an industry which is overwhelmingly partisan and opposed to them?
Robby Soave of Reason has more on this:
Survey: 59% of Republicans Now Think College Is Bad for America
Only half of all Americans now have a positive view of colleges and universities, according to a new survey from Pew Research. The number of people who take a negative view has increased from 26 percent in 2012 to 38 percent in 2019.
The change largely reflects a growing dissatisfaction on the right with the culture of college campuses. The percentage of Republicans who see value in higher education has collapsed in recent years, from 53 percent in 2012 to just 23 percent in 2019…
Higher-education leaders need to be cognizant of the public’s concerns. The majority of people—Republicans and Democrats; whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics—do not believe race should be a factor in admissions decisions, and yet some of the most elite institutional educations in the country have defiantly maintained such a practice.
If current trends in higher education continue, expect the number of people who disapprove to rise.
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Comments
Is it any wonder? Not a day goes by without a story of some higher ed institution beclowning itself with idiotic, toxic, PC initiatives of one type or another.
What we have today is an “UN-educational system.”
“… The left has controlled higher education for a long time, but in recent years, it has gone into Orwellian territory.”
Which, of course, no one predicted.
Even if you’ve provided your child with a strong conservative foundation, 4 years of incessant propaganda and peer pressure will likely have a negative and detrimental effect.
Be very, very careful where you are willing to send your child to college.
If I had to do it over again, there would only be a very few I’d even consider.
Ergo why home schooling is growing so fast.
You can even do “home college” now – with lots and lots of ways to verify and received “college credit” for that home college learning if you wish to “transfer” those credits into a university system.
Spot on. My oldest left for college and I saw her corrupted by the end of her sophomore year. My second child went to the Air Force Academy and came out relatively unscathed politically. They were raised in a very conservative Marine Corps household.
Employers don’t care what you know how to do; They just want to see that piece of paper.
For Technology positions the only “Paper” that employers want to see is a Independent testing service’s “Certification” such as CompTIA or Microsoft Certified Professional. With most Programming Jobs the Employer will actually test the person. They want to know if you can solve problems and your coding style. As for other degrees, the want to talk to former employers and references.
Yes, big tech firms are hiring people and not requiring them to have any college degree. Think Apple does that now.
This is a clumsy question that doesn’t get to the heart of the matter. STEM education is undoubtedly good for America.
The real problem is the indoctrination agendas, political schemes, and thought police.
Japan reformed their university system by trimming away the fluff subject matter that was open to abuse. We should, too.
One of my twin nephews told me that when he was at orientation this summer, the staff introduced themselves as ‘Hi, I’m ABC and my pronouns are’. Not ‘welcome, I bet you are excited, nervous, you are going to love it here, etc.
Apparently this is the thing. My brother told me that the father of one of their classmates was at Cal Poly earlier this year to narrow down his final choice of school when a student walked up to them and did the same pronoun speech. The father looked at his son and said ‘you are f***ing going to Gonzaga’ and they turned and walked out.
(The great irony is that I think a lot of this is starting to backfire. During the same orientation trip, my nephew and his friends were curious about the fraternities and knocked on tbe door of one. The guy who answered it was wearing a Reagan/Bush hat.)
Don’t you wish all or at least a lot of those college freshmen would respond with something such as:
“Hi, I’m Sue, and My Pronoun is “GO F Yourself!”
The same garbage is happening at ‘Zag. Do you remember Melissa Click and Rachel Dolezal? They’re here.
Defund it all college as well as K-12. Vouchers for the poor and, let the market decide.
Spot On!
Parents will pay multiple times more attention to the educational process if they have to invest as much time as they do currently in deciding which cell phone provider to use.
What was the old saying grandpa was a farmer so dad could be a welder so I could go to college? I think this country has forgotten why we need college and it’s just become a right of passage.
They can barely teach real STEM – that has been dumbed down.
The Humanities and the Liberal Arts (original meaning) used to teach great things expanding minds. Plato, Augustine, Bach, Vermeer, Homer, Shakespear… Now they teach diversity dreck.
All the while teaching “hate whites” “hate the free market” “hate Christianity” “hate men whom all are rapists”.
Conversely, with the internet, all the information and training is available for a fraction of the cost, you just won’t have to have any sheep skinned. Others are at places like The Teaching Company. And you can learn useful skills.
Someone used the analogy that basketball players were very tall, so if you wanted to be tall, just play basketball. College grads were smart, so if you want to be smart go to college! Meanwhile to get more tuition (paid by debt slaves) they dumb down the courses so the silly kids will pay for 4 or 5 years – who cares if they can do anything, just get the cash.
The problem is more that Colleges are connectons – Harvard! Yale! MIT! Stanford! But you will learn the same things and might even be better skilled at the local community or agricultural college.
Wharton School of Business? When did a school like that ever produce Presidential material?
Is the Penn/Wharton remark a backhand insult to Trump?
He only got in as a transfer and was there for 2 years. Imagine what the Ivy League could have done to him in 4 years.
I truly believe that President Trump is made of stiffer stuff than that. He is very thick skinned, which has done him well. If he went to college for 10 years, that stupid stuff would slow him down not one bit.
I don’t suppose I should be surprised that Republicans control so many state legislatures and are largely silent and inactive on reform.
We don’t suspect: we know! Colleges are mostly attacking and undermining the Constitution that many of us have sworn an oath to protect and defend, and all of the foundations of Western Civilization that it rests on. If they are not reformed by the government or their stake holders, we will have to destroy them, and start over with entirely new and different personnel.
Not if one doesn’t mind their one purpose,fomenting Marxism.
Among many, many others, I did not see going to college as my path through life. I joined the Navy out of high school, spent 20 years, 6 months, 18 days there. While there, I became an ET busted my brains trying to be #1 in the class. I was edged out by .00967 points. During that time, the ONLY better ET education was MITs ET training. After retiring from the Navy I worked here/there for 10 years. Then I moved off-shore on drilling rigs. During that time, I started out making 1.2K per year. The last 13 years I worked, I was making 176K per year. The top pay in the U.S. gov was 174K per year for Fed Congress/Senators. I always got a laugh over that.There are just as many ways to get a descent pay check than going the college route. I really do not know how often I was handed hamburgers through the window by a 4 year former college student. Many more 2 year college students than 4 year former college students.
Anti-male, anti-white, anti-America, anti-Constitution, anti-borders. More and more, universities oust and condemn anyone who doesn’t support a socialist agenda and have become virulently racist and sexist against white males. Such institutions should be shut down post haste. Projection has become an art form in American universities.
Three part comment on the subject of higher education.
1. Direct Funding to University.
The federal government must stop funding universities and colleges directly. Instead they should fund specific research needs of a particular agency or department. So the agriculture department could fund say University of Iowa to conduct a ten year study on the effects of using marginal land to grow corn.
2. Direct student funding.
Federal government should restrict use of any Pell grant, subsidized loan, etc to ‘real courses’. The basic 2 year general liberal arts studies; Economics, U.S. History, Western CIV, Into to Psych, Sociology, Biology, Algebra, Foreign language, this is what kids should be receiving so those courses would be eligible for funding. As would STEM degrees along with a traditional trade school degree or certification.
No funding for courses about ‘the cultural impact of 18th century lesbian Latina witchcraft.
3. Personal choices.
Students wishing to study non funded subjects can get a job and pay for that nonessential claptrap themselves.
Philanthropist funding is still just fine so if Daddy Warbucks wants to fund a university department of some nonessential claptrap he is free to so. This is still a free country.
GI Bill use would be left to student’s discretion. It is an earned benefit and if that particular veteran chooses to study something that is fine. That veteran is free to waste their time and money.
Graduate school. Replacement rate funding for Masters and PHD in approved doctrines only. So if ten PHD employed teaching US History are projected to retire in six years then funding for ten PHD in US History would be allocated. Students not selected as part of that cohort can pay for their own grad school.
I’ve known many a “well-grounded” conservative sent off to college and come back a raving Leftist lunatic.
Exception: Hillsdale College.
We need more post-secondary schools like Hillsdale College!
The growing suspicion and distrust of colleges is one of the few welcome signs in American life.
Colleges are too expensive–not because of risimng faculty salaries, but the ever increasinging number of paper pushing bureaucrats; the ever larger number of worthless required courses –such as ethnic studies, sexual and gender studies–to provide jobs for affirmative action types and left-wing propagandists; and the proliferation of remedial courses to remedy the
gaps from the ever worse public secondary school system.