7 ms·

This short article is one person's take on a recent Gallop poll. Here is a direct link to the poll itself: https://news.gallup.com/poll/646880/confidence-highe

This short article is one person's take on a recent Gallop poll. Here is a direct link to the poll itself: https://news.gallup.com/poll/646880/confidence-higher-education-closely-divided.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/646880/confidence-higher-educat... The primary take-away seems to be that, since 2015, Republican confidence in higher ed has dropped 36%, and Democrat confidence has dropped 12%. This is based on the question "Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in higher education - a great deal, quite a lot, some or very little". The first two options appear to be combined in the data/graphs. 68% now say higher education is "headed in the wrong direction". The primary source doesn't say how many people were asked or how they were asked.[1] The drop seems to be a combination of concerns about ideological capture and falling economic utility. 1 - It does say "The research includes the trend results reported above from Gallup’s June telephone survey as well as new results from a contemporaneous web survey of more than 2,000 Gallup Panel members." But I don't know what this means.

throwaway42668 2y ago
I wouldn't even know how to answer the question as presented in the poll. Confidence in higher education to do what?
- Spivak 2y ago
  Yeah, until it materializes in lower rates of people actually going to college people at minimum folks seem pretty confident that it has a return on investment. Also I'm honestly not sure I really care/put any weight into the opinions of random adults whose opinions of higher education are basically a reflection of how universities are portrayed to them in their news bubble. The fact that political affiliation not only matters but matters a great deal means it has little to do with the institutions themselves. I bet you could get the same results with "confidence in science" which is just as vague and nonsensical.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    It has been materializing in fewer people going to college in fact.
    - DiscourseFan 2y ago
      Probably has more to do with birth rates, but nevertheless its a good thing since these institutions of higher learning will be more accessible to people who are actually passionate about whay they’re learning rather than a bunch of people trying to check a box
      - somenameforme 2y ago
        Fertility rates are an interesting hypothesis, but looking at the data I think we can definitely say that's not the driver. In 2011 there was total enrollment of about 21 million. In modern times we're down to around 19 million. [1] Fertility rates have only recently cratered, and from 1990-2010 we were even pretty close to sustainability. That's relevant, because that's when most of all of the current student body would have been born. So there's definitely fewer children, as can be clearly seen in this population pyramid [2], but it can also be seen the difference is, at most, the low hundreds of thousands. And we're talking a difference on the order of millions fewer students. An open question would also be the overall shift (if any) in international enrollment. If international enrollment has stayed the same (or even increased) then it means the decline in American enrollment could be even more extreme. By contrast if international enrollment has completely plummeted, it could go some way towards mitigating these numbers. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Population_Pyramid.sv...
  - throwaway42668 2y ago
    I would have loved a control question like, "How much confidence do you have in confidence?"
    - nerdponx 2y ago
      How much confidence do you have in weather? How much confidence do you have in yourself?
    - navbaker 2y ago
      Thanks for the Sound of Music song bomb, that’s definitely going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day!
  - somenameforme 2y ago
    We reached 'peak university' (in terms of enrollment) in 2011. [1] I also would not say political affiliation matters, as confidence is plummeting for all groups. As for science, they seem to have stopped asking this question after 2021 (perhaps to avoid the temporary biases caused by COVID?) but Gallup has indeed had science as one of their 'confidence in institution' series of questions. [2] As of 2021 it had a total of 64%, leaving it as the ~3 highest rated institution. That's contrasted against 36% for higher education, leaving it somewhere between the church and medical system. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll... [2] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.as...
    - cm2187 2y ago
      Don't think covid affected university reputations that much. Slogans like "decolonize maths" and skin colour based recruitment and award of degrees give me very little confidence even in modern STEM degrees from formerly prestigious universities.
      - tivert 2y ago
        Honestly, I think universities took their good reputations for granted, and so chose to pursue other goals than maintain them. I don't think any institution can maintain the confidence of the general public without being scrupulously neutral on controversial things (or at least scrupulously respectful of all common perspectives) and staying focused on widely-shared values.
      - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
        These are niche talking point if you aren’t terminally online. Most people probably aren’t even considering politics, it’s just an issue of cost and roi. Degrees are oversaturated and insanely expensive.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
abakker 2y ago
This is really lowest common denominator reporting, on top of lowest common denominator sampling, and lowest common denominator question design. A far better approach would be in trying to test for a specific hypothesis, e.g. "I believe confidence in higher ed is falling due to XYZ" reasons. But, in the context of Gallup, I think this kind of research is really there not to answer questions, but to provide a sort of pre-signal to aide in hypothesis generation. Now that this result exists, large numbers of companies and organizations will do paid studies to figure out what this means in detail, who thinks it, and identify areas they can course correct in their strategy. Gallup does good work, but this kind of omnibus question is not really meant to answer any questions. Source: I work in B2B survey and interview research.
- simpaticoder 2y ago
  >Now that this result exists, large numbers of companies and organizations will do paid studies to figure out what this means in detail, who thinks it, and identify areas they can course correct in their strategy. I would particularly like to see questions about "higher education" binned by field. I hypothesize that sentiment will differ most strongly between STEM and "X studies" fields, with the classic liberal arts subjects (English, history, etc) somewhere in the middle. I'd also be curious to know what the public knows about "the reproducibility crisis" or administrative bloat, if anything. And it would be fascinating to ask those with and without degrees, across 2-3 generations.
  - abakker 2y ago
    absolutely - binning and cohort analysis is critical here. There's also (at least in my mind) a very reasonable question about what "higher education" means. I think it would be extremely valuable to understand expectations for BA / BS undergrads, Technical colleges / associates degrees, Masters degrees in liberal arts vs social sciences vs STEM, and then Doctorates. I imagine people have not lost confidence in much of the apparatus of professions - e.g. engineering schools and law schools. It would also be very interesting to me to map this against what people's perceptions were for graduation rates, scholarship availability, average student debt, and even the perceived impact that a school's endowment had on education quality. There's a lot to know, but seeing the very basic trend exists means that there is something to look at.
agrajag 2y ago
> The primary take-away seems to be that, since 2015, Republican confidence in higher ed has dropped 36%, and Democrat confidence has dropped 12%. It’s a little hard to tease out how much of this is due to the demographics of Republicans and Democrats changing. There’s been a significant shift in education level between the two parties recently, and this may have offset some of what would otherwise be broad based decreases. The broader decrease in faith in higher education is still quite clear signal though.
- roenxi 2y ago
  That demographic theory seems a bit feeble. According to the polling back in 2015 there was a slight bias but splitting by politics painted the same picture in a with minor adjustments. Then there was a massive realignment where suddenly the right wing "lost confidence". It isn't obvious why less-educated individuals would have no confidence in education either. That is like saying less-physically-endowed people don't respect height or muscle mass! People can respect what they do not have if it is respectable, and they can have confidence in things they personally lack if they are things inspiring confidence. Although what the word "confidence" means here is a baffler. It is beyond vague.
  - KennyBlanken 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - matrix87 2y ago
      Don't know why you're getting downvoted... seems very well said. There's this disturbing attitude in right wing media that almost celebrates people deciding to turn away from higher ed. It's like they actually want people poor and stupid The one thing you don't mention though are the effects of free trade policies and immigration on their economic conditions I think the general pattern here is a sort of self-reenforcing attitude associated with poverty. It's hard for me to look at more extreme progressives trying to eliminate high ability classes and not see some of the same thing
demondemidi 2y ago
If only the author of the poll had studied statistics and psychology.
gigatexal 2y ago
this is a really well written summary. Thank you! It’s sad that as an electorate, as a people, (even the democrats), show a lowering of “confidence” in higher ed. It means experts and scientists get ridiculed. It’s disgusting and sad. Is this a harbinger of a failing empire? I think so.
- WalterBright 2y ago
  > It means experts and scientists get ridiculed Given the shameless plague of fraudulent papers, and the gaming of citations, my faith in experts and scientists has been damaged. Then there was the "trust the science" fiasco around covid. Trust is like glass - easy to break, and very hard to restore.
  - matthewdgreen 2y ago
    Most of the “fraudulent citations” stories you’ve seen were by non-US researchers. But nobody leads with that detail, because the goal is to cherry-pick bad behavior from across the goal in order to convince people that US higher education is entirely corrupt. It’s the same phenomenon that has half the country convinced that violent crime in US cities is out of control, when in fact a detailed analysis shows that it’s at historically low levels.
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > Most doesn't mean there isn't a lot of local fraud. Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind. Let's not forget that fraudulent Alzheimer's paper that misdirected Alzheimer's research for decades. The Pons and Fleischmann cold fusion fraud? Does it matter if most come from foreign scientists, when prestigious journals publish them? What are we supposed to do, reject papers with foreign sounding names? Why aren't the journals doing proper vetting? Attempts to suppress any counterclaims to the official scientific opinions during covid would make anyone skeptical. Then there's this: https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/the-misrepresentation-of-oakland https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/the-misrepresentation-of-oak... https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-media-say-crime-is-going-down-dont-believe-it-e5b07784 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-media-say-crime-is-going-do... One should be careful about statistics reported by an entity that has a strong self-interest in the outcomes.
somenameforme 2y ago
There's extensive information on how this poll is conducted here. [1] It's a bit different than normal because it's not a one-off survey, but rather a long-term recurring polling. This particular series has been going for 23 years now. I'd guess they added the higher education aspects in 2015 (since that's when the graphs begin). Higher education took a really unexpected turn. We hit 'peak higher education' in 2011 [2], but everybody at the time was expecting it to continue growing rapidly as it had in the decades prior. [1] - https://www.gallup.com/175307/gallup-poll-social-series-methodology.aspx https://www.gallup.com/175307/gallup-poll-social-series-meth... [2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll...

throwaway42668 2y ago

I wouldn't even know how to answer the question as presented in the poll. Confidence in higher education to do what?

Spivak 2y ago
Yeah, until it materializes in lower rates of people actually going to college people at minimum folks seem pretty confident that it has a return on investment. Also I'm honestly not sure I really care/put any weight into the opinions of random adults whose opinions of higher education are basically a reflection of how universities are portrayed to them in their news bubble. The fact that political affiliation not only matters but matters a great deal means it has little to do with the institutions themselves. I bet you could get the same results with "confidence in science" which is just as vague and nonsensical.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  It has been materializing in fewer people going to college in fact.
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    Probably has more to do with birth rates, but nevertheless its a good thing since these institutions of higher learning will be more accessible to people who are actually passionate about whay they’re learning rather than a bunch of people trying to check a box
    - somenameforme 2y ago
      Fertility rates are an interesting hypothesis, but looking at the data I think we can definitely say that's not the driver. In 2011 there was total enrollment of about 21 million. In modern times we're down to around 19 million. [1] Fertility rates have only recently cratered, and from 1990-2010 we were even pretty close to sustainability. That's relevant, because that's when most of all of the current student body would have been born. So there's definitely fewer children, as can be clearly seen in this population pyramid [2], but it can also be seen the difference is, at most, the low hundreds of thousands. And we're talking a difference on the order of millions fewer students. An open question would also be the overall shift (if any) in international enrollment. If international enrollment has stayed the same (or even increased) then it means the decline in American enrollment could be even more extreme. By contrast if international enrollment has completely plummeted, it could go some way towards mitigating these numbers. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Population_Pyramid.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:USA_Population_Pyramid.sv...
- throwaway42668 2y ago
  I would have loved a control question like, "How much confidence do you have in confidence?"
  - nerdponx 2y ago
    How much confidence do you have in weather? How much confidence do you have in yourself?
  - navbaker 2y ago
    Thanks for the Sound of Music song bomb, that’s definitely going to be stuck in my head for the rest of the day!
- somenameforme 2y ago
  We reached 'peak university' (in terms of enrollment) in 2011. [1] I also would not say political affiliation matters, as confidence is plummeting for all groups. As for science, they seem to have stopped asking this question after 2021 (perhaps to avoid the temporary biases caused by COVID?) but Gallup has indeed had science as one of their 'confidence in institution' series of questions. [2] As of 2021 it had a total of 64%, leaving it as the ~3 highest rated institution. That's contrasted against 36% for higher education, leaving it somewhere between the church and medical system. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll... [2] - https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.as...
  - cm2187 2y ago
    Don't think covid affected university reputations that much. Slogans like "decolonize maths" and skin colour based recruitment and award of degrees give me very little confidence even in modern STEM degrees from formerly prestigious universities.
    - tivert 2y ago
      Honestly, I think universities took their good reputations for granted, and so chose to pursue other goals than maintain them. I don't think any institution can maintain the confidence of the general public without being scrupulously neutral on controversial things (or at least scrupulously respectful of all common perspectives) and staying focused on widely-shared values.
    - BriggyDwiggs42 2y ago
      These are niche talking point if you aren’t terminally online. Most people probably aren’t even considering politics, it’s just an issue of cost and roi. Degrees are oversaturated and insanely expensive.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

abakker 2y ago

This is really lowest common denominator reporting, on top of lowest common denominator sampling, and lowest common denominator question design. A far better approach would be in trying to test for a specific hypothesis, e.g. "I believe confidence in higher ed is falling due to XYZ" reasons. But, in the context of Gallup, I think this kind of research is really there not to answer questions, but to provide a sort of pre-signal to aide in hypothesis generation. Now that this result exists, large numbers of companies and organizations will do paid studies to figure out what this means in detail, who thinks it, and identify areas they can course correct in their strategy. Gallup does good work, but this kind of omnibus question is not really meant to answer any questions. Source: I work in B2B survey and interview research.

simpaticoder 2y ago
>Now that this result exists, large numbers of companies and organizations will do paid studies to figure out what this means in detail, who thinks it, and identify areas they can course correct in their strategy. I would particularly like to see questions about "higher education" binned by field. I hypothesize that sentiment will differ most strongly between STEM and "X studies" fields, with the classic liberal arts subjects (English, history, etc) somewhere in the middle. I'd also be curious to know what the public knows about "the reproducibility crisis" or administrative bloat, if anything. And it would be fascinating to ask those with and without degrees, across 2-3 generations.
- abakker 2y ago
  absolutely - binning and cohort analysis is critical here. There's also (at least in my mind) a very reasonable question about what "higher education" means. I think it would be extremely valuable to understand expectations for BA / BS undergrads, Technical colleges / associates degrees, Masters degrees in liberal arts vs social sciences vs STEM, and then Doctorates. I imagine people have not lost confidence in much of the apparatus of professions - e.g. engineering schools and law schools. It would also be very interesting to me to map this against what people's perceptions were for graduation rates, scholarship availability, average student debt, and even the perceived impact that a school's endowment had on education quality. There's a lot to know, but seeing the very basic trend exists means that there is something to look at.

agrajag 2y ago

> The primary take-away seems to be that, since 2015, Republican confidence in higher ed has dropped 36%, and Democrat confidence has dropped 12%. It’s a little hard to tease out how much of this is due to the demographics of Republicans and Democrats changing. There’s been a significant shift in education level between the two parties recently, and this may have offset some of what would otherwise be broad based decreases. The broader decrease in faith in higher education is still quite clear signal though.

roenxi 2y ago
That demographic theory seems a bit feeble. According to the polling back in 2015 there was a slight bias but splitting by politics painted the same picture in a with minor adjustments. Then there was a massive realignment where suddenly the right wing "lost confidence". It isn't obvious why less-educated individuals would have no confidence in education either. That is like saying less-physically-endowed people don't respect height or muscle mass! People can respect what they do not have if it is respectable, and they can have confidence in things they personally lack if they are things inspiring confidence. Although what the word "confidence" means here is a baffler. It is beyond vague.
- KennyBlanken 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - matrix87 2y ago
    Don't know why you're getting downvoted... seems very well said. There's this disturbing attitude in right wing media that almost celebrates people deciding to turn away from higher ed. It's like they actually want people poor and stupid The one thing you don't mention though are the effects of free trade policies and immigration on their economic conditions I think the general pattern here is a sort of self-reenforcing attitude associated with poverty. It's hard for me to look at more extreme progressives trying to eliminate high ability classes and not see some of the same thing

demondemidi 2y ago

If only the author of the poll had studied statistics and psychology.

gigatexal 2y ago

this is a really well written summary. Thank you! It’s sad that as an electorate, as a people, (even the democrats), show a lowering of “confidence” in higher ed. It means experts and scientists get ridiculed. It’s disgusting and sad. Is this a harbinger of a failing empire? I think so.

WalterBright 2y ago
> It means experts and scientists get ridiculed Given the shameless plague of fraudulent papers, and the gaming of citations, my faith in experts and scientists has been damaged. Then there was the "trust the science" fiasco around covid. Trust is like glass - easy to break, and very hard to restore.
- matthewdgreen 2y ago
  Most of the “fraudulent citations” stories you’ve seen were by non-US researchers. But nobody leads with that detail, because the goal is to cherry-pick bad behavior from across the goal in order to convince people that US higher education is entirely corrupt. It’s the same phenomenon that has half the country convinced that violent crime in US cities is out of control, when in fact a detailed analysis shows that it’s at historically low levels.
  - WalterBright 2y ago
    > Most doesn't mean there isn't a lot of local fraud. Elizabeth Holmes comes to mind. Let's not forget that fraudulent Alzheimer's paper that misdirected Alzheimer's research for decades. The Pons and Fleischmann cold fusion fraud? Does it matter if most come from foreign scientists, when prestigious journals publish them? What are we supposed to do, reject papers with foreign sounding names? Why aren't the journals doing proper vetting? Attempts to suppress any counterclaims to the official scientific opinions during covid would make anyone skeptical. Then there's this: https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/the-misrepresentation-of-oakland https://www.oaklandreport.org/p/the-misrepresentation-of-oak... https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-media-say-crime-is-going-down-dont-believe-it-e5b07784 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-media-say-crime-is-going-do... One should be careful about statistics reported by an entity that has a strong self-interest in the outcomes.

somenameforme 2y ago

There's extensive information on how this poll is conducted here. [1] It's a bit different than normal because it's not a one-off survey, but rather a long-term recurring polling. This particular series has been going for 23 years now. I'd guess they added the higher education aspects in 2015 (since that's when the graphs begin). Higher education took a really unexpected turn. We hit 'peak higher education' in 2011 [2], but everybody at the time was expecting it to continue growing rapidly as it had in the decades prior. [1] - https://www.gallup.com/175307/gallup-poll-social-series-methodology.aspx https://www.gallup.com/175307/gallup-poll-social-series-meth... [2] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enrollment-and-projections-in-public-and-private-institutions/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/183995/us-college-enroll...