\n<\/p>\n
Forty-seven\u00a0percent of Americans have \u201ca great deal\u201d or \u201cquite a lot\u201d of confidence in higher education, according to a new poll.<\/span><\/p>\n Jumping Rocks\/Universal Images Group\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Despite the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing attacks on colleges and universities, American confidence in higher education is growing. <\/p>\n According to a poll the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy published Thursday, 47\u00a0percent of 1,030 Americans surveyed said they have \u201ca great deal\u201d or \u201cquite a lot\u201d of confidence in higher education institutions, with a net positive rating of 33\u2014up 13\u00a0percentage points since 2023. Survey respondents reported more confidence in higher education than in the police (44\u00a0percent), the medical system (38\u00a0percent) and large tech companies (25\u00a0percent). <\/p>\n Those findings echo the results of two recent polls\u2014one by New America and another by Gallup and the Lumina Foundation. The latter showed that 42\u00a0percent of Americans said they have a \u201cgreat deal\u201d or \u201cquite a lot\u201d of confidence in higher education, compared to a low of 36\u00a0percent in 2024 and 2023. <\/p>\n But like those polls, Vanderbilt\u2019s showed partisan divides. <\/p>\n While 69\u00a0percent of Democrats said they were confident in higher education, only 35\u00a0percent of Republicans said the same; just 24\u00a0percent of respondents who identify with Trump\u2019s Make America Great Again movement expressed confidence. However, the vast majority (78\u00a0percent) of people surveyed said a college education is \u201cvery\u201d or \u201csomewhat\u201d important for a young person to succeed, including 87\u00a0percent of Democrats and 68\u00a0percent of Republicans. <\/p>\n \u201cWhile the conventional wisdom may suggest that support for colleges and universities is low, it\u2019s important to highlight that most Americans view higher education as a net positive for society, and its support has actually increased from the low levels we saw in 2023 and 2024,\u201d Josh Clinton, co-director of the Vanderbilt poll, said in a news release. \u201cYes, there are real concerns\u2014most people think affordability is a major problem, and many perceive colleges and universities as having a partisan slant\u2014but that\u2019s very different from widespread opposition to the idea of higher education itself.\u201d<\/p>\n Fifty-six\u00a0percent of people surveyed believe that colleges and universities conduct scientific and medical research that saves lives, but only 14\u00a0percent said they remain as affordable as possible. The majority (67\u00a0percent) also cited political bias on campuses as a serious problem, though Democrats (54\u00a0percent) were less likely to agree than Republicans (79\u00a0percent), especially those who identified with the MAGA movement (91\u00a0percent).<\/p>\n Nearly three-quarters (71\u00a0percent) of respondents said universities should refrain from taking official stances on political issues, including 83\u00a0percent of Republicans and 59\u00a0percent of Democrats. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Forty-seven\u00a0percent of Americans have \u201ca great deal\u201d or \u201cquite a lot\u201d of confidence in higher education, according to a new poll. Jumping Rocks\/Universal Images Group\/Getty Images Despite the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing attacks on colleges and universities, American confidence in higher education is growing. According to a poll the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[7130,2266,495,177],"class_list":{"0":"post-24300","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-confidence","9":"tag-growing","10":"tag-higher","11":"tag-public"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24300"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24300\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}