How Americans Feel About Opportunities Beyond High School

Graduation season is in full swing, and as this year’s cohort of students enters the workforce, it’s important to reflect not only on the value of a college education, but also on the associated attitudes toward higher education in America. Recent surveys by Gallup and the Pew Research Center suggest that there’s a strong partisan divide. These reports are peppered with questions like, “Why are Republicans down on higher education?” and statements like, “Republicans have grown increasingly negative about the impact of colleges and universities on the United States.” With the rise of so many different types of institutions of higher education and opportunities for on-the-job learning—like apprenticeships—is it really possible that such a large segment of the population feels so negatively about education after high school?

Recently, New America released its second annual Varying Degrees report, which examines Americans’ perceptions of higher education. And the data paints a picture different from, and much more nuanced than, what the surveys suggest, particularly when it comes to those who lean Republican. In fact, three out of five (60 percent) of Republicans are comfortable with their taxes going toward higher education, and 78 percent of Republicans feel positive about the colleges and universities near them. Also of interest: Nearly all (90 percent, with 53 percent strongly agreeing) of Republicans agree that apprenticeships and skills-training programs prepare students for a good standard of living.

To better understand the data and findings, I had a Slack chat with Rachel Fishman, the deputy director for higher education research at New America and one of the authors of Varying Degrees. Our interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Riker [8:16 PM]

Hi Rachel, thanks for taking the time to chat today about Varying Degrees, the report you just put out about perceptions of higher education.

rachelfishman [8:18 PM]

Excited to talk data! 📈📊

Riker [8:19 PM]

Since this is the second time you’ve released Varying Degrees, there are many data points that were tracked from last year, while some were added and subtracted. Can you tell me a little more about how last year’s inaugural survey informed this year’s methodology?

rachelfishman [8:22 PM]

Last year was a great learning experience, with us figuring out what we wanted to focus on and how to ensure we had interesting, helpful, and nuanced findings about higher education. Since a lot of focus has been on college costs, we wanted to focus more on what people think the value of college is, how they feel about different types of higher education, what they know about today’s students and the funding structure of higher education, and what the government’s role in higher education is.

This year, we wanted to build on the work we started last year and really zero in on some topics—specifically, we ask a lot of questions about government funding and people’s comfort level with spending their own taxpayer dollars on higher education, and the role federal and state governments should play in funding higher education.

Since it’s a midterm election year, we also looked at a new demographic in addition to political ideology (liberal/conservative): findings by party identification (Democrat/Republican).

What stayed the same, and what we’ll track over time, will be a lot of the questions about how people feel about community colleges, public four-year colleges and universities, private nonprofit colleges and universities, and for-profit colleges and universities.

Riker [8:28 PM]

I noticed that Varying Degrees oversampled North Carolinians. What was the reasoning behind selecting NC for the oversample?

rachelfishman [8:36 PM]

North Carolina is a really interesting purple state. In the 2016 election, NC voted for Trump but also elected a Democratic governor. North Carolina also has an incredibly strong system of higher education—from the well-known, flagship UNC-Chapel Hill to a solid community college system that includes apprenticeship partnerships and Early College High Schools. Since this is an election year, we thought that understanding the viewpoints of North Carolinians would provide some helpful color to the report, as North Carolina could be a bellwether of things to come.

We also feature a couple profiles my colleagues Ernest Ezeugo and Sophie Nguyen wrote about some interesting NC programs. Elon University is doing some great work pairing academic transcripts with experiential transcripts, to help students share with future employers what they’ve accomplished and learned both inside the classroom and out. For instance, Siemens Charlotte has partnered with Central Piedmont Community College for an apprenticeship program in machining. Apprentices earn and learn at the same time, and once graduated with an associate degree are hired at Siemens and make a great wage while taking on very little to no debt for their education.

Riker [8:45 PM]

It’s interesting that you focused on the Siemens apprenticeship program, because after digging through some of the data, I noticed that 90 percent of Americans support apprenticeship programs, but only 48 percent believe that there are well-paying jobs that don’t require education after high school. Why do you think that this is the case? Were there notable divides based on race, gender, political party, etc.?

rachelfishman [8:48 PM]

I do think that 48 percent is oddly high. As someone who works in higher education policy, I’m left thinking: How do so many people believe that there are well-paying jobs that don’t require _any_ education after high school? I’m not aware of lots of well-paying jobs available to those with just a high school diploma or less!

Demographics that were more likely to believe this were male, white, Republican, with lower educational attainment. The gender contrast is especially stark on this one.

rachelfishman [8:51 PM]

rachelfishman [8:53 PM]

What’s interesting is that after this question, we asked people if there are more opportunities for those who pursue education after high school right away or a job right away, and overwhelmingly, regardless of demographic, people believe that it’s better to enroll in higher education.

I wonder if it comes down to what people think when they hear “well-paying,” as we didn’t define it for them.

Last year, we asked, “Is higher education fine the way it is?” and we asked that this year, too. (Spoiler alert: People think that higher ed needs to change.) But this year, we asked, “You said higher education is/is not fine the way it is. In your own words, why?” I think that this is one question that next year we should give the same treatment. I really want to know why a near majority of Americans think there are lots of well-paying jobs without any education after high school, because employment/earnings data don’t bear that out 🤔

Riker [9:04 PM]

Do you think that this loops back to the Pew and Gallup studies that show that Republicans are less enthusiastic about higher education than Democrats, often by significant numbers? Since white men with lower educational attainment are generally Republican, does this help to explain their findings? The Varying Degrees data seems to suggest that this isn’t the case. Do you think their methodology was flawed, or do Republicans simply hold more nuanced views of higher education than their surveys found?

rachelfishman [9:13 PM]

I definitely think that Republicans haven’t soured so much on higher education as the media would like us to believe when reporting on the Gallup/Pew data. I won’t deny that Pew and Gallup certainly found that Republicans feel negatively about higher education. But to me, in performing focus groups in the lead-up to this work, people who feel negatively about higher education often felt that way about the “institution” of higher education. When they spoke about it, it was clear they were thinking of the canonical college—an Ivy League or other prestigious school or public flagship.

However, when we made the conversation more local and asked people about how they felt about the institutions located near them, our focus groups were always so enthusiastic about them.

I started to wonder if this was part of the “love your Congressmen/women but hate Congress” effect. Globally, Republicans have a lot of criticism of higher education, but locally their colleges and universities are great.

rachelfishman [9:16 PM]

So we asked just that on the survey this year, and, no surprise, Republicans and Democrats alike feel positive about their local institutions.

Riker [9:23 PM]

Well, I guess we’ll see if people love their congresspeople in the upcoming elections! Definitely a lot of information to chew on. Thanks for taking the time to chat, Rachel!

rachelfishman [9:24 PM]

This was fun! Always happy to chat about data 🤓