The Public Is Giving Up on Higher Ed - Commentary

Michael D. Smith, professor of information technology and marketing at Carnegie Mellon University (PA), writes: It’s common knowledge that Americans are losing confidence in higher education. Even so, the numbers that Gallup reported this summer were sobering. Only 36 percent of Americans, Gallup found, have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed. That’s down from 57 percent in 2015 — a drop of more than 20 percentage points in just eight years. These findings are no anomaly.