Actually, Americans Do Trust Higher Education

Kevin Tyler 

We are back. Higher Voltage is back. I’m so glad to welcome today’s guest. I’m going to give you a little bit of background before we dive into the introduction. You know, we’ve seen over the last several years so many headlines that talk about the decreasing trust that Americans have in higher education. And recently I came across an article from the University of Rochester that talked about some recently released research from a group of researchers that draws on more than 31,000 survey responses from all 50 states around the public opinion of higher education in America today. It’s one of the most comprehensive snapshots of public opinion on US colleges and universities in recent years. And with us today, we have one of the researchers from that work, David Lazer, who is the University Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Computer Sciences at Northeastern University and co-director of, listen to this, Institute on Information, the Internet and Democracy. Before coming to Northeastern University, he was on the faculty at the Harvard Kennedy School. His research has been published in such journals as Science, Nature, proceedings of the National Academy of Science, and has received extensive coverage in media including New York Times, NPR, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as CBS Evening News. David is among the leading scholars in the world on misinformation and computational social science, and has served on multiple leadership and editorial positions, including a board member of the International Network of Social Network Analysts, among many others. David, I’m so excited to have you on Higher Voltage, and I’m very excited to have this conversation with you.

David Lazer 

Kevin, thank you for having me. I’m excited to have this conversation.

Kevin Tyler 

So the study that we are talking about today finds that 59% of Americans support higher education. That might sound positive compared to the tone of public discourse, which I referenced earlier, but where does that number stack up historically?

David Lazer 

Well, I’d make two sets of comparisons. One is thinking about the trajectory historically, and the second is how does that compare to other institutions. So historically we don’t have data that go as far back as we do for certain other institutions, but certainly there is some. It’s lower than the high point. Say, if you look at Gallup data, you can see earlier points in time where it was somewhat higher. In Gallup data, we can see it’s gone down and then sort of bounced back up somewhat recently. But what’s interesting is if you look at many institutions, there are data that go back to the early seventies, and generally for most institutions it has been declining trust. And so what we’ve seen in that longer term trend with higher education sort of fits with generally declining trust in institutions in the US. Higher education does count among the highest institutions in terms of trust. Presently, because our set of questions around trust, for example, compared higher education to around twenty other institutions and it ranked in the top four, right, very close to science, medicine and doctors in the military. And those four institutions, those three plus higher education were at the very top in terms of trust. So when you compare across institutions, higher education is far more trusted than than most institutions in the US currently.

Kevin Tyler 

Well, it’s exciting news to hear right after a long season of hearing otherwise. I’m curious if you can speak to where the gap in the narrative comes from, like, why have we heard so long about the declining trust? Is it just less than it used to be, or that it’s significantly less? And then you come out with research that says otherwise? I’m so interested in hearing your take on the, you know, disconnect or dissonance there.

David Lazer 

Well, I think there are a lot of things going on at the moment. I do think that even though trust I mean, first of all, trust has generally declined because it’s part of a just general decline in trust. So that’s point one. It’s just that if you don’t contextualize it, then it looks worse than it is. Or, you know, there’s a question of, it’s a problem. It’s not just a problem of higher education. It’s a problem of declining trust across the board. The second is, there’s no doubt that it has been a rough few years for higher education. That there has been a lot of criticism. Criticism in terms of how higher education has handled the protests around Gaza, what’s happening in Gaza and Israel and so on. And it’s come under criticism both from liberals and conservatives. And so that’s a very specific issue. And so if you forefront an issue that’s been very hard for higher education, it’s certainly there is an accurate perception that there’s a lot of unhappiness with how higher education has handled the set of issues around protests. But for opposing reasons, it’s been there’s been no way to keep not only hasn’t there been any way to keep everyone happy. It’s not clear that there’s any way to keep anyone happy in terms of dealing with protests in Gaza presently. And the final issue is, obviously the set of policies and challenges that higher education is confronting right now, that there are big partisan divides in trust. And even though we do see in our data a lot of bipartisan agreement about the important values that. Higher education offers a contemporary… There are particularly very large partisan gaps in trust. And right now we see Republican control of government. And certainly we’ve seen a radical drop in the trust of higher education by those in power, like those in power in Congress, by those in power in the White House. And so that is clearly true. But if we’re looking at public opinion, we’re actually not seeing such radical declines in trust. And even though we see partisan divides in the broader set of perception of values that higher education offers, there’s still a pretty strong bipartisan consensus that higher education is crucial for science and technology, for the economy and for local prosperity. And so there is a complex story here. It’s not all good news for higher education. But actually the bigger picture is much better in terms of public opinion than it is with respect to the policy environment that higher education is confronting right now.

Kevin Tyler 

I think that’s a really thoughtful way to navigate this kind of conversation. And the fact that just generally trust is on a decline for institutions across the board, and that this might not just be a higher education problem, at least from that level or that perspective. But there are these other kinds of components that might not be as bad as we have once thought or that we have been told are. I’m really curious about, you know, you raised the point about the federal government and their mistrust or distrust of the institution. And do you have any thoughts around whether that is as powerful, less powerful or more powerful than, like the state level mistrust or distrust of the institution?

David Lazer 

Yeah, I think what we’re seeing is a federal versus state divide. And then on the state divide, the difference between Republican controlled states and Democratic controlled states and then finally a differential effect on public education. And so right now we see that this has become a very tough time, especially it’s a tough time in some ways for all of higher education because of federal policy. But then it’s really a tale of two cities in terms of if you’re a public institution in a red state, these are tough days, right? Because you’re seeing undermining of tenure cutbacks in financial support, more activist intervention, in terms of things like review of curricula, and policies in Republican controlled states. Now, what’s interesting is our survey, our data allow a deep dive at the state level. And even in Republican controlled states, there’s not an enthusiastic support for the policies that we see in those states. Again, I think a lot of it is, is that, you know, there is on the one hand, there’s bipartisan support for higher education. But there is still a partisan divide. Democrats are much more supportive and Republicans have more skepticism. But then when we look at strong Republicans in particular, we don’t bring this out as strongly in the report as perhaps ideal. But when we look at strong Republicans, who are the ones who are voting in primaries, we see particular negativity around higher education. And I think that it’s that sort of partisan filter that is crucial, for example, in who gets elected in Republican states. And I think that’s made it especially difficult for public universities in Republican states. And whereas if you’re a private university in Republican states, you’re relatively less vulnerable. And then if you’re in a blue state, you’re in a much more sympathetic environment. And we’re going to see you know, so I do think we’re going to see really tough times for public universities in Republican states for the foreseeable future.

Kevin Tyler

Yeah. Agreed. One of the things I found striking about the kind of the top line results coming out of the research was that the study finds really remarkably strong support for higher education’s role in things like science and in healthcare research. I’m curious what you think that says for how these institutions should proceed in the face of challenges that we’re seeing from the Trump administration?

David Lazer

Well, I think, you know, universities have some very strong cards to play. Yeah. Because there are all these crucial, main, important things that the public sees. Higher education is crucial for research on health care and medical care, is a place that the public sees universities as crucial for advancement of science, the local economy, all of these are things that there’s strong bipartisan support in the role that universities and higher education more generally plays. And so, you know, part of what universities can do, and I think you see varying approaches in communication strategy for universities. But one of the things that universities really can do is lean into the message. Do you want new cures for cancer? Do you want science and technology to advance? What role do universities play in your local economy? All these are things that have very strong bipartisan support, and should be places where universities are heavily leaning into that message. Institutions have varied how much they want to speak out about these threats versus keeping their heads down. And I think that ultimately universities really need to lean into those messages very publicly. They should not be partisan. It should be, if you think that universities should be doing research on medicine, then we’re doing that and you should support funding to that end. And I think that there would be a lot of support. There would be a lot of willingness for the public if they’re called upon, to reach out to their political representatives and say, our universities are really important to things that we hold dear, and you should support them. And I think that has not happened as much as it might.

Kevin Tyler

Yeah, I think that that’s 100% accurate. I think that, I mean, you know, I’m encouraged by some of the quote-unquote pushback we are seeing from higher education to some of these new policy proposals, the list of demands, quote-unquote, that’s coming from the federal government and these institutions who are saying no. And some of them, like UCLA publishing the list so that people understand what exactly is being asked of them. I think that this kind of momentum that is being built from the industry, not individual institutions, is going to really serve the market quite well. Hopefully, at least just a few weeks ago, Pew released another article talking about 7 in 10 Americans think higher education is going in the wrong direction. Those kinds of headlines, that kind of data, that kind of research colors your findings at all. And if not, why? If so, how?

David Lazer

Well, you can approve of the values that higher education offers and still believe that it’s not going in the right direction. Right. I mean, part of part of the ambiguity of that question is really like, if you don’t like the cutting of funding for science and higher education, if you don’t approve of everything that is happening to higher education, you are probably going to say it’s not going in the right direction. Right. And then on the other hand, if you think that higher education really needs these interventions that, you know, they’re too liberal, the campus climate is terrible and so on, you’re also probably saying it’s going the wrong direction. So there’s a difference between saying that higher education is going to a better place right now, which I think you know, who believes that, right? Whether, you know, no matter what your position is, who really believes that higher education is going in the right direction. And that’s very different from saying, I think higher education is doing crucial things for science, for medicine, that I want my kids to go to university and so on. So, you know, one has to be very careful in terms of how you interpret, like right direction, wrong direction questions.

Kevin Tyler 

Absolutely.

David Lazer 

And I see the Pew results as being totally compatible with everything we found. It just might be interpreted as saying people don’t approve of higher education. They don’t think it offers value. And actually, it might be that you think that the current moment is undermining higher education, and therefore higher education is going the wrong direction.

Kevin Tyler 

Exactly. Wrong direction can mean a thousand different things. Right. So I appreciate the clarity that you’ve provided there. I think that we can get really caught up in those kinds of headlines that are tooled in just the right way to elicit some sort of reaction. And I think it’s, you know, as we have many other things in higher ed, put on a couple of different lenses to, like, really understand what’s being said or not said in headlines like this. One of my favorite parts, at least about the article that was written about the research, is that it argues that higher education operates from a position of relative strength, but of course faces some genuine vulnerabilities if left unaddressed. I think you’ve talked about a bit of them kind of around the periphery, but can you share a few of those vulnerabilities in your perspective on how institutions might be able to address them?

David Lazer 

Sure. I think, number one, there’s a lot of concern about the cost of higher education. You know, higher education is expensive. I also think that we often, you know, we, as a country, need to think about how we make higher education more affordable. And it’s a tough task because it may not be accessible to the same type of efficiency improvements that we see in other sectors of the economy. And then that becomes a question of like, how do we support higher education? There was a lot more state and federal support, certainly state support for public universities. And public universities, for example, were a lot cheaper decades ago. We’ve also transferred a lot of the costs of higher education onto the shoulders of students, who then have to, in the form of student loans. And part of the question there becomes, as a matter of policy, you know, how do we… Some students do quite well and, you know, paying those loans back is not burdensome, and for others it’s just a loadstone that they carry for decades. And so I don’t think that’s a thing that higher education can solve by itself. I think some wealthy institutions, like Harvard and MIT, announced policies that were very generous. That essentially will be tuition free if your family makes below, what sounds like quite a lot of money, on the order of $200,000. But that’s not where most people go, right? That’s a tiny sliver of a tiny sliver of students. And so we do need to think more generally as a nation about how we make higher education affordable. And higher education has to be part of the solution. But it really can’t just cut tuition by half. Right. And so and of course, some of the questions also around what people are actually paying because there’s actually also a very complex formula for what people actually pay. We see these top line numbers which most people aren’t paying. And so there’s even a question of how we communicate. While higher education, how much people really pay for higher education, there is also really an authentic issue of how expensive higher education is. And so there’s a lot of concern about the cost of higher education. And there should be. It’s expensive. And then there are a lot of concerns around campus climate, about freedom of speech. There’s concerns on both the left and the right. They may be opposite concerns, but there’s clearly a lot of concern around what will be the consequences for your speech on campus right now. And that is also a thing that, again, it’s not entirely controlled by universities right now. Some of this has to do with university policy. But of course, we’ve seen students at risk of losing their visas, international students losing their visas for things they’ve said. And that’s definitely a concern on the left. And yet there’s also a universal concern on both, both among both Democrats and Republicans, that universities tend to have a liberal bias. And so there are these concerns about campus climate that also actually have a substantial bipartisan element, at least in some ways. Again, there may be in some ways where when someone says they agree to these, it’s a different concern on the left than the right, even though you’re saying, yes, I’m concerned. But there’s definitely a major concern, bipartisan concern about campus climate. And, you know, it’s really hard to figure out exactly how you make everyone happy if, in some cases, that bipartisan concern is actually worries about your speech and not the other side’s speech. And there’s an interesting question of whether there’s a potential bipartisan consensus about opening up the reopening up, the aperture for speech that might make everyone happier. Or maybe it’ll make everyone even less happy. Hard to say. Yeah.

Kevin Tyler

I think that’s, I think it’s all fair. I think one of the things that I’m hopeful about because of this research is that higher education marketing professionals can start to thread an even more refined needle when it comes to the messaging and the messaging pillars that we’re using to attract prospective students and their families to our institutions. I think that this, you know, we approach it as like a cattle call, right? We want to attract as many people as possible to the incoming class or the seats we have available. And I think knowing exactly what the public opinion is from a surgical, precise kind of perspective, we’re able to refine messaging so that it strikes at the heart of what students and their families want for themselves. And I think that that is, you know, the crux of this conversation is making sure that institutions have what they need to, you know, really create a very refined message for the cultures and communities that they want to invite to campuses.

David Lazer 

And I push even further than that, that it’s not, you know, marketing, the marketing framing is really is about your competition, like, how do we situate ourselves relative to the other competitors, right. What differentiates us, which, you know, every university takes a lot of care about that. But I think this is a moment of existential danger to the industry, to higher education more generally. And I think that this isn’t just a sort of marketing of how we situate ourselves with respect to another institution. It’s really about making the case that higher education offers value writ large, and that support of higher education is crucial to American society. And I think we are at a moment of collective existential danger to higher education, to science, and our institutions, if you start with a marketing framework, are really not built to collaborate around messaging. How do we jointly lift all boats? And I think that there needs to be a shift in communication mindset to say, number one, higher education is critical and we must support it. But that number two, we are in danger and that our institution is going to suffer in huge ways. We’re going to have to fire people. We’re going to get less science done. We’re going to be able to be less innovative educationally and so on. Those in education need to reveal their vulnerability. Right. Which is hard because most universities are trying to say, here’s how great we’re doing. We’re doing better than our competitors. And they need to say, here’s how we’re getting hurt. We’re getting bruised, we are getting slashed. We are losing a limb. I mean, like, they need to really be quite dramatic about their vulnerability and how that is a collective danger. And that’s what I hope. That’s what I hope gets catalyzed. That discussion in higher education gets catalyzed in part by our findings.

Kevin Tyler 

Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I think that one of the things I say on this show quite often is that the sooner that we get out of that competitive mindset and more of a collective one, as you’ve shared, the quicker we can get to the other side. I think of this kind of danger that you speak of. What we have done in the past is not going to get us to where we need to go next. And I think that this kind of information around public opinion and the points that people are most concerned about, you know, of the opinion that marketing is about way more than just getting butts in seats. It is about making sure people understand the value, and that people are reminded of why we exist as higher education institutions, what we offer there, the economy, etc. and those are the messages that often get lost. It’s about, you know, the other stuff, the superficial, the cosmetic. And we are now at a time when we are past the superficial and the cosmetic. We need to talk about the deeper, more deep seated kinds of values that we hold as institution capital, i.e. not as institutions singular. And so I’m excited about what might come to be, you know, in dire circumstances, anything is possible, right? And so I think that I’m hopeful that we have some sort of sea change in not just perception, but also, you know, the support that we see of our higher education institution.

David Lazer 

And I’ll say one more, one more thing in this regard, which is I do think, there are certain ways that higher education and science… Look, we have a paper coming out looking at trust and distrust of science, and science is generally highly trusted and of course, very closely associated with higher education. But we see these enduring gaps over fifty years of who distrust science. And a lot of that has to do with the social distance of science from certain corners of society. So we see communities are less trusting. We see African Americans less trusting. We see women are less trusting, we see people with lower education are less trusting. And all of that highlights of how and I think this is very contra what universities are doing right now is that we need to open up the aperture and to reach out more to to groups and groups that have been underrepresented in the Academy have been underrepresented in science, because otherwise we risk actually undermining even further the trust in higher education and in science.

Kevin Tyler 

I think that that’s well stated, and I think it leads almost directly into the next question. And that is like, were any of the trends that surfaced in your research geographically specific? And if so, in what areas?

David Lazer 

So we see, for example, some regional divides in approval and trust in science. And so generally everywhere. Actually I should note everywhere there’s high approval but in some places higher there’s even higher approval, like Massachusetts, unsurprisingly, which has such a high density of higher education, is very high approval. The South, especially the Deep South, has lower approval and trust of higher education. And so that region sort of stands out somewhat. But even there generally, the relatively high levels of approval and trust, it’s just relative to the rest of the country, because the approval levels are generally so very high everywhere. But definitely the South stands out as being somewhat less trusting and approving of higher education.

Kevin Tyler 

It feels like, I mean, not to stereotype or anything, but it feels like those are. That’s what I assumed might be kind of the geographic trends in the information that you collected. And I think that, you know, it raises a bunch of questions in my mind around, you know, interstate applications. If I’m from a place that feels more distrust in a higher education and or the curriculum that’s being taught, how do I get to another place in them, understand or value my my learned experience at that point as a prospective student and all the other things that kind of come to mind when we think about these differing attitudes towards higher education from a geographic perspective. You know, I’m going to ask this question, and I think we kind of covered part of it. I’m going to ask it anyway in case other things come to mind for you. And what do you hope to achieve with this study and what comes next?

David Lazer 

Yeah. So on the first question, you know, as a professor, one has to believe that putting information out there and teaching in a fashion somehow makes things better. And that’s almost like an article of faith. And we’ll see how it goes. Right. And and so, you know, I hope that some illumination makes the world a little clearer to see. And in particular, I think there are some that are really running against the dominant narrative, which I do think that there’s a story about declining trust and, and, and the low points of higher education and a lot of that. Like I said, there’s some validity to elements of that, but it’s actually a more complex story. And I hope that this, you know, what we find clarifies that complexity and highlights, actually that higher education institutions in this country actually have very high levels of approval and belief by most of the public that it’s crucial to the delivery of key values. And so I hope that message gets out and I hope it informs decision makers in higher education who are deciding how to communicate. I hope that policymakers see this and understand what the public thinks, because I think that understanding public opinion plays a crucial role in a democracy. Right? Because elected leaders, you know, can’t see all of this. And I hope that this will make some of this clearer about what they need to do. So that’s why I hope we accomplish this report. We’ll see. Time will tell. The second thing is that I hope that we can do some sequel reports to really dive into some of these issues. Like a lot of the concerns around climate, campus climate was really quite intriguing how there are these seeming bipartisan concerns. And I think that there’s more complexity there, because I think that liberals and conservatives have perhaps in some ways some shared concerns and they have some opposing concerns, which I would really love to do as a sequel. This is sort of work I did some years ago where we did these deliberative town halls where we had political leaders, but then a random assortment of the public in a room discussing an issue. And I would love to do follow-on work to say, all right, let’s get people with opposing points of view in the same room and say, you know, all right, we’re all, we have differences. But there are also some commonalities we sort of have. We do have to live in the same country. How do we hash this out? Right. So that we achieve the values that we all think are crucial in our society and that we sort of work out some middle ground, which is awfully hard today. But I actually think that there is a sort of middle ground just given the amount of actual bipartisan agreement that we saw here. And so I would love to get people to think about some systematic way where we worked out the places that people agree and worked out spaces for policies and that could garner bipartisan support even in this era of partisan polarization. So that’s what I would really love to do in the future.

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Kevin Tyler 

I think that higher education is in a moment of time where all types and all kinds of support is going to be welcome, and I think that those types of support around research and themes and conversations and deliberative town halls are all going to end up serving an industry in a really thoughtful way, and we can make better decisions with more information. So I appreciate the work that you’re doing to kind of shed some light on what people think about higher education from all types of angles. The last question is the one I ask every single person who comes through the doors of Higher Voltage, and that is what do you think higher education will look like in the next five or ten years?

David Lazer 

You know, I think it’s going to be a tough few years ahead of us. There are multiple scenarios. Some of them are, you know, higher ed comes through this bruised but maybe stronger in some ways. And another scenario is that we, we come out of this having lost our lost our soul and our wallet, right like that, that we have compromised our values in fundamental ways and also have come out fundamentally reduced in terms of resources, and that we come out where nobody trusts us,and that we are much diminished in five or ten years. I do think those are two very different scenarios here, and I’m not sure which way it’s going to go. I think it could really go either way. So I know which side I’m, you know, obviously I’m sure which side you are and I’m pushing for. But, you know, these are tough moments. And I think that this is why higher education, thinking collectively, how we guard those values that make us valuable to us, society is where we really need to come together. And I say that just a final note on this is actually my parents are both academics. My mother was an economist. My dad was a political scientist. My dad was a soldier in World War II, you know, went back to college, GI Bill taught at City College in New York for his career. And my mother was an economist and served at SUNY Stony Brook. And there’s a way in which I feel like I carry this almost one hundred year legacy of higher education on my back. And, you know, most of that period was up, up, up, right. There was occasional downturns. But really, you know, the number of people going to college and university was expanding. We had international appeal support, federal support, state support, especially federal support has been routinely increasing. And we’re definitely at a point where that might all end. This might be the end of the story. I really hope not. But it could be. And that’s why we really need to figure out how to respond together, to continue to deliver what higher education has been offering us, society, and in some ways increasingly so, for really, you know, seventy, really ever since the end of World War II and that my family history sort of rides that, both my father and my mother were the first in their families to go to college. And they went there and we never stopped. And I hope, you know, I feel like it’s on my shoulders to figure out how do we keep going.

Kevin Tyler 

I couldn’t, I couldn’t agree with you more. And, you know, as you were speaking, one of the things that I was thinking about is like, every industry evolves, every single industry has some sort of evolutionary change that exists in it, but also to the space in which that industry exists also changes. And if higher education is not responding to the pace of evolution from the outside world, then it will be a lot harder to climb out of the hole that we’re in. And so I think that when we see opportunities for better messaging around not just what we are offering on this campus, but what we are offering as an institution, how we talk more culture, how we talk about what we believe in, who we’re for. We have a much better shot at survival than if we keep our heads in the sand. And I you know, I heard you loud and clear when we were speaking earlier about, you know, this is not a time for higher education to not look up and see what exactly is going on around us, because a lot is at stake. And so I too am of the opinion that I will do whatever I can to help support its success, whatever that means, and I hope that it sustains itself in the ways that benefit as many people as it always has, if not more so. 

David, thank you so much for joining me on this show. I really appreciate your insight and your expertise, and I would love to invite you back at some point when more research is released, to see what the differences look like, or what other really important conversations can be had around the work that you’re doing.

David Lazer 

Kevin, it’s been an honor and a privilege to be speaking with you about this.

Kevin Tyler 

Appreciate that.