Preface
Every year that we collect data for Varying Degrees, New America’s annual survey of how Americans feel about higher education, something new challenges our data collection, interpretation, underlying assumptions, and analysis. And every year we review the questionnaire, make tweaks based on previous data, and add new questions relevant to what is happening at the moment. All of this work is aimed at better understanding the opinions and perceptions of Americans over time when it comes to the value, funding, and accountability of education after high school.
This year started out no different. When New America finalized its survey instrument in early January, a novel coronavirus was spreading in China and seemed a distant reality. When we fielded the survey in February, we were only beginning to understand the possibility that there would be an epidemic spread. By the end of our data collection in late February, the first deaths had been reported in the United States and an outbreak in Washington State was underway. Cases and deaths started being reported around the country. Less than two weeks later, in early March, the World Health Organization declared that this coronavirus, officially referred to as COVID-19, was a global pandemic.
States and localities started instituting restrictions, many eventually calling for extreme social distancing to prevent a surge of cases in our healthcare system. Most colleges and universities told their residential students not to come back from spring break or to leave campus immediately. Local K–12 schools shut down. Students around the country fired up whatever computing technology they had when they were abruptly forced into online learning. Employees who were able to telework were sent home. Much of the service industry shuttered so quickly that unemployment rates soared to levels unseen in modern history, making the worst of unemployment filings from the Great Recession look like a blip. A roaring economy came to a sudden, abrupt halt.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 cases and deaths keep rising. Anxiety and grief abound, leaving people wondering when we will ever return to a normal way of life. So much is unknown. The data we collected pre-pandemic might as well have been a hundred years ago.
In the midst of a global public health and economic crisis, public opinion on education beyond high school has already likely changed. Unlike the previous recession, the economic pain of this recession will be hard to alleviate with our normal financial tools. COVID-19 will not go away anytime soon, and we likely face a year or more of social distancing and shelter in place requirements, which will result in a deeply impacted economy.
Recessions usually equate with more people turning to education after high school to gain skills and pursue careers in a changed economy. During the Great Recession, enrollment soared to heights never seen before in colleges and universities across the nation. So much is unpredictable now, as colleges and universities do not even know if they will be able to host on campus students in the fall. But here are a few things that seem likely. Some will face budget shortfalls so great that they will have to close. State and local budgets will take such a thorough beating that students, many who have faced losses in income, will face steep increases in tuition at public colleges and universities. Online education will be relied on in ways we have never seen before.
No one’s life will go untouched by this crisis. This crisis will fundamentally change our economy in the short term and have repercussions in the long term. Our economy will have to adapt to a new normal for the one to two years when the threat of this disease is the highest. Some sectors will be hard hit, while new industries will grow. Certain ways of doing business will adapt.
Education after high school will also adapt. There will be new programs and new ways to learn and to meet the increasingly complicated lives of today’s students. If federal and state governments want to set the country on the path of economic recovery, they must invest in their citizens. Part of that investment will be through increased funding for post-high school educational opportunities.
Varying Degrees provides the public opinion data to help policymakers understand how people value education after high school, how it should be funded, and how it should be held accountable. Though these data are divorced from the current reality of our economic times, there is no doubt that the value of education after high school will only grow, and they provide an important baseline to judge how attitudes and perceptions change as the result of this crisis. Our numbers show there is strong bipartisan agreement that higher education needs to be funded and that it provides a good return on investment. Next year, we will be able to see the impact of this public health and economic crisis on public opinion about education after high school.
Who knows what the next year will bring. But we remain steadfast in providing researchers and policymakers with important trend line data that will help us understand the new America that emerges.