Two-thirds of Americans desire change within the higher education system, a recent New America sponsored survey found.
Varying Degrees 2019: New America’s Third Annual Survey on Higher Education highlighted American’s opinions on the state of higher education and its contributions to economic mobility. The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago carried out the survey which had 2,029 participants who were over the age of 18.
“For those that write about higher education, journalists or researchers, I think sometimes we assume that we know how Americans feel about higher education,” said Alejandra Acosta, a policy analyst at New America. “But really, we don’t because we are so stuck in this bubble so I hope that this can help other people ground their work and show where Americans are in their understanding about higher education and help more Americans understand how it works.”
The cost of colleges and universities was one of the biggest areas of concern for Americans. Only about half of Americans found higher education to be affordable, the survey reported.
Though reasons behind the unaffordability of college vary and were not directly addressed in the survey, Sophie Nguyen, who is the program associate for the Higher Education Initiative at New America, predicts that it’s due to the rise in tuition over the last decade. This ultimately has caused more students to take out loans and face high amounts of debt.
For Erin Knepler, who is a research scientist in the Higher Education Analytics Center at NORC, the idea of the financial implications of attending college as well as the burden of debt stood out to her the most from the survey’s results.
She said that it’s important for people to understand the debt repayment process as well as recognize when it is a good time to take on debt. For example, it would be worth it in the long run for a student to take out a loan if they only had one or two semesters left of classes.
