Accountability

Because Americans believe state and federal governments should use taxpayer dollars to make higher education more affordable, we also wanted to understand how they feel about holding institutions accountable for that investment. Since 2019 Varying Degrees has been asking how important it is for colleges and universities to provide publicly available data on key indicators of institutional quality such as graduation rates, graduates’ employment rates, and graduates’ earnings. Over the years, Americans have made clear that data transparency is important, with near universal agreement across party line, age, and race and ethnicity (see Figure 35).

Americans also support the idea that colleges and universities should lose access to taxpayer dollars if they have poor outcomes such as low graduation rates, low rates of graduates earning a living wage, and high rates of graduates earning less than the average high school graduate. As in previous years, approximately 65 to 75 percent of Americans agree that institutions should lose access to taxpayer dollars if students have poor outcomes (see Figure 36). Democrats and Republicans agree that institutions should be held accountable for their outcomes.

In previous years, when we have asked if certain sectors of higher education spend money wisely or run efficiently, there has only been agreement that the public sector of higher education does. No longer. This year, for the first time, Americans did not think any sector of higher education spends money wisely or runs efficiently. This perception may help explain some of the souring Americans expressed on the value of higher education overall. Just under half of Americans believe that community colleges spend money wisely (45 percent) and run efficiently (45 percent). The numbers decline from there for all other sectors. The lowest is the for-profit sector, where only 26 percent of Americans agree that institutions spend money wisely and only 31 percent agree that they run efficiently (see Figures 37 and 38).

Republicans are more skeptical than Democrats that colleges operate efficiently and spend their money wisely. There is only one sector where the parties agree; neither Democrats nor Republicans agree that for-profit institutions run efficiently or spend money wisely (See Figure 39).