Foreword

When we first conceptualized Varying Degrees in 2016, we were seeking to investigate what Americans know about higher education, how they value it, and what they believe the roles of various stakeholders should be. We wanted to create a body of high-quality public opinion data about higher education in order to help illuminate preferences and beliefs about educational opportunities beyond high school along with specific concerns by demographic.

Over the three years we have administered Varying Degrees, we have seen shifts in America’s political climate. It has been clear from all the focus groups that we conduct annually that people are feeling deeply cynical about the direction our country is going, and there is skepticism about some of America’s most vaunted institutions, including colleges and universities. A longitudinal survey conducted by Pew Research, for example, found that Republicans’ views of colleges and universities have turned sharply negative over time.¹

It is no wonder there is a fair amount of pessimism about higher education simmering among Americans. With college costs soaring, students and families are increasingly on the hook to finance their own educations through earnings, savings, and loans. It is understandable that people have felt frustrated with their options for an affordable and high-quality education after high school. Several recent high-profile scandals surrounding free speech, campus climate, and admissions to some of America’s most elite institutions may be contributing to this frustration too.²

But Americans’ opinions about higher education are complex. Understanding this complexity is important for learning how to talk about the value of educational pathways after high school and crafting thoughtful policy solutions to meet the needs of today’s students. This is the reason we engage Americans every year, asking questions other surveys do not delve into, and digging deep to reveal the sentiments and nuance of people’s thoughts about higher education, its value, who should fund it, and what the government’s role should be.

This year, we completely revamped Varying Degrees. Given the great strides online survey research has made, we transitioned to an online/telephone design using AmeriSpeak, a representative panel developed by NORC at the University of Chicago. AmeriSpeak allows us to capture better representation of harder-to-reach populations such as young adults, current students enrolled in higher education programs, and oversamples of African American, Latinx, and Asian American populations.

Along with moving our survey to a new platform, we have also taken a thorough look at our questionnaire and made several changes and additions. We examined the terminology we use in our questions to make sure it encompasses all experiences in higher education. For example, we adopted the phrase “education after high school” to describe all postsecondary opportunities. Because of these changes, we have lost the ability to track several questions over time. We believe that this was a necessary adjustment to make sure the questionnaire is as encompassing of peoples’ experiences with our higher education system as possible.

Finally, moving to the AmeriSpeak panel has allowed us to ask several more questions than we have in previous years since underlying demographic data are already recorded and respondents can answer online questions faster, nearly tripling the number of questions. This year, for example, we focus on who should fund education after high school, how we should hold institutions accountable, and whether selective colleges and universities should have certain admissions preferences. AmeriSpeak has also given us the capability to ask about food insecurity among a national sample of today’s students.

We will continue to improve our data collection methods and survey questionnaire as we move forward, to ensure that we understand the nuances of people’s opinions about education after high school and that we are reaching a nationally representative population. The methodology for this year’s survey can be found in Appendix A of this report.