Most parents still want to see their children pursue college after high school, despite what you may hear. And, we uncovered how one university treats its most well-connected students.

Losing trust in college? It’s more complicated than that.

A New America brief out this week pushes back on the notion that Americans are turning away from college. This is an idea that comes up a lot, particularly as it relates to declining enrollment numbers and campuses at the center of culture wars. I talked with Kevin Carey, vice president of education and work at New America and one of the brief’s authors, about its findings. 

There’s an often-cited poll result that says that nearly half of parents don’t want their children to go to a four-year college. But that’s another way of saying that more than half of parents do want to send their children to college, he said.  

One reason for the confusion is that the term “college” is both legally defined and socially constructed, Carey said. The word conjures up images of fraternity parties, leafy green quads, red brick buildings, and young adults. But the reality looks different.

Carey notes that the majority of adults don’t have four-year degrees, and never have.

“From a public-policy standpoint, from a legal standpoint, college also means community college.” 

And, many of the routes parents say they want their children to take after high school — learning a vocation, having an apprenticeship — amount to college.

“There are people, if you ask them, who say, ‘No, I don't want I don't want my kid to go to college. I want them to go and get training for a career.’ Well, you do want them to go to college. That's where people get training for careers,” Carey said. 

Two other takeaways: 

Now more than ever, the bachelor’s degree is a dividing line in politics. 

“People with a bachelor’s degree or higher made up 43 percent of Hillary Clinton voters, but only 29 percent of Trump voters,” the brief said.

This wasn’t always the case. In 2000, people with bachelor’s degrees were more likely to vote for the Republican president. We have previously explored this trend in Watauga County, N.C. and in two Jefferson Counties.  

Distrust of institutions is being conflated as doubt in the value of a degree. 

There’s been a lot written about how Americans have lost faith in the value of higher ed. This is based on a Gallup poll that asks whether people have “a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little” confidence in major institutions, such as Congress, banks, and churches.

The first year that Gallup included higher ed on the list was 2015. More than half — 57% — of people had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in it, and only 9% said very little. By 2023, those first two categories had dropped to a combined 36%, while “very little” had risen. 

“These results, more than any others, have driven the story that Americans are losing faith in the value of college. Note that Gallup did not actually ask people what they thought about the “value” of college. Value, faith, and confidence are all different ideas,” the New America brief said.

In fact, when higher ed is pitted against those other institutions, it’s actually one people think they can count on. Only small business and the military polled as more trustworthy, Gallup found.

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Elsewhere on Open Campus

From Mississippi: Mississippi State University has been giving spots in nicer dorms to well-connected students of donors, politicians, and alumni, through a practice known as “five star.” The university had never made this public, and Molly Minta, our reporter at Mississippi Today, learned about its innerworkings through documents that also highlight how administrators wanted to keep it quiet.

From Ohio: Kent State University is hiring for its first director of national recruitment, a marker of how the admissions office is increasingly forced to look beyond Northeast Ohio for students, writes Amy Morona at our partner Signal Cleveland. It’s a notable shift: 80% of Kent State’s student body is from Ohio. 

From Tampa Bay: Amid concerns over academic freedom and political pressure, more than 39% of Florida faculty who responded to a recent survey say they have applied for jobs in other states in the last two years, report Ian Hodgson and Divya Kumar at our partner The Tampa Bay Times. 

“The governor has led a thoroughgoing politicization of higher ed, resulting in attacks on individual faculty, the professoriate, and whole fields of study,” one University of Florida professor wrote.

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