Threat No. 6 — Poor Public Understanding of What We Do
A recent Gallup
poll reports that the percentage of U.S. adults who believe college is very
important has dropped from 70% in 2013 to 51% this fall. The same survey showed
that those who believed it was “fairly important” or “not too important” rose from
13% to 36% in the same time period.
This September, The Wall Street Journal and THE (what the London Times
Higher Education Supplement has become) hosted a gathering of university
leaders to announce this year’s THE/WSJ
rankings. The big unveiling of the top 10 revealed MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, and
seven of the Ivies. Imagine the surprise.
This same event included a presentation on how institutions
can hire THE as a consultant to
improve their standings in THE’s own rankings—really!
I believe media coverage of the declining public confidence
in higher education is a main cause of the decline, but there appears to be little
appetite among the press to push in the other direction.
During another panel the THE/WSJ
event, Douglas Belkin, one of the principal higher-education writers for the WSJ, stated multiple times that young people are less and less inclined to
take the risk of investing in a college education. During the same panel, Joe
Barrett, U.S. Midwest and national education editor for the WSJ, stated that the earnings gap
between college graduates and non-graduates is at an all-time high. There is a
disconnect.
As Louis Menand recently wrote in The New Yorker, “Almost every study concludes that getting a college degree
is worth it. What is known as the college wage premium—the difference in
lifetime earnings between someone with only a high-school diploma and someone with
a college degree—is now, by one calculation, a hundred and sixty-eight per
cent. For people with an advanced degree, the wage premium is two hundred and
thirteen per cent.”
The earnings advantages of obtaining a college degree didn’t
used to be the prime driver for pursuing one. In the 1960s, ~80% of college
students stated that the main reason they enrolled was to develop a personal
philosophy and ~20% listed the prime reason as increased earning potential. By
the 1990s, that ratio had inverted. The focus on earnings now seems even
greater, but that may be because the relationship between a college degree and
increased income has grown.
The fiscal return
on investment is now much greater than 50 years ago, when far fewer
good-paying jobs required a college degree.
In the same article, Menand wrote, “In the nineteen-fifties and sixties, the college wage
premium was small or nonexistent. Americans did not have to go to college to
enjoy a middle-class standard of living. And the income of Americans who did
get a degree, even the most well-remunerated ones, was not exorbitantly greater
than the income of the average worker. By 1980, though, it was clear that the
economy was changing. The middle class was getting hollowed out, its less
advantaged members taking service jobs that reduced their income relative to
the top earners’.”
Now even many “blue-collar” jobs require significant
technical training.
Like fifty years ago, the greatest benefits of a college
education are its potential to expand a student’s world view, to challenge
students to appreciate competing value systems, to empower them to value and
celebrate difference, and to cultivate generous civility. Higher education in
its best form is dedicated to developing humble leaders, engaged citizens, and
good neighbors.
The new Gallup data cited above may be an
indication that, in the maelstrom of contemporary media, the average U.S. adult
does not understand the objective earnings data and has lost an awareness that
higher education is dedicated to fostering leadership, citizenship, and
civility. A more chilling conclusion is that at this particularly troubling
inflection point in our history, fewer respondents believe these qualities are
important. Let us hope not.