It must have been a jarring moment for many of the attendees at the American Council on Education’s annual meeting in March as hundreds of college presidents and other senior figures gathered for a conversation about the value and purpose of higher education.
As I prepare to step aside this year as president of ACE, I am confident that higher education continues to be the surest path to economic and social well-being. However, many of our fellow citizens, including the parents whose children attend our institutions, do not share that confidence. For those at the meeting, it was not easy to be confronted with the evidence of that skepticism.
The council’s senior vice president, Terry W. Hartle, asked the attendees to participate in an instant poll. He explained that the stunning national presidential election results had prompted ACE, with the support of others, to commission research into public perceptions of the value of higher education. After all, we reasoned, if so many pundits had dismissed Donald J. Trump’s chances of defeating Hillary Clinton, it would be a good idea to check into how Americans felt about the work we and our member institutions are doing.
Before sharing some preliminary findings of that research, Terry asked the audience to answer four of the questions we had posed to members of the public during several focus groups:
- Is the economic value of college increasing?
- True or false: Half of student-loan borrowers owe less than $13,000.
- Yes or no: Most colleges and universities focus on carefully managing costs and limiting tuition increases.
- Are traditional colleges and universities for-profit institutions?
Not surprisingly, most of those at the meeting who took the poll answered, correctly, that the economic value of college is increasing; that half of borrowers indeed owe less than $13,000; that most institutions do try hard to manage costs and limit tuition increases; and that traditional colleges and universities are nonprofit institutions.
Why do I say not surprisingly? Because while American higher education has faced many changes over the past several decades and is in the midst of challenging and tumultuous times, over the course of my career there has been at least one constant: A higher-education degree or credential provides the tools to construct a successful life. We in higher education believe, and all the evidence supports, that college graduates are happier and better off in virtually every way, economically and socially, than the average noncollege graduate.
As the College Board found in its “Education Pays 2016” study, individuals with higher levels of education earn more, pay more taxes, and are more likely than others to be employed. “College education increases the chance that adults will move up the socioeconomic ladder and reduces the chance that adults will rely on public assistance,” the report concluded.
However, as Terry Hartle went on to say, most of those we spoke with in the focus-group sessions answered these same questions differently.
Indeed, in contradiction to all the evidence of the increasing value of postsecondary education, a clear majority of our focus-group participants said they believed that the economic value of a college degree has stagnated or even declined.
Do half of all student-loan borrowers owe less than $13,000? Yes. But that is not what a majority of the focus-group participants believed. And fewer than half of them think that colleges and universities focus on managing costs and limiting tuition increases to the best of their ability.
Are traditional colleges and universities for-profit institutions? Higher-education leaders know that the correct answer is no. But most of the focus-group participants believe that statement to be true.
Those we spoke with in our focus groups still see a college degree as the surest path to a good-paying job. But in the context of the perception of that diminishing value overall, they were focused on costs — and nearly all of them believed in the popular narrative of colleges graduates’ being unable to find sustainable work and living in their parents’ basements, a story line that grew out of the recession of 2008-9.
Despite those views about the declining value of a college education, most of those we spoke with think that a postsecondary degree remains a “ticket to entry,” as one participant put it, into the work force. However, they also perceive higher education as merely a commodity, and an overpriced one at that, not the excellent value and force for public good and intellectual advancement that we in higher education are certain we offer our students and society as a whole.
As Judy C. Miner, chair of the council’s board, noted at the annual meeting, the debate regarding the value and purpose of higher education has never been more compelling. After World War II, higher education was expanded to meet the increasing demand for expertise in a changing American economy, with colleges not only growing to meet that need but, in the process, also providing a pathway to social mobility for millions of citizens.
I believe that higher education continues to provide that pathway, including for millions of adult learners who must return to classes to gain a college degree or credential if they hope to remain economically viable in our increasingly globalized economy. Helping ease that path to a degree is something that higher-education organizations and many colleges and universities are working hard to achieve. ACE, for instance, is offering college-credit recommendations for workplace and military courses and training outside of traditional classrooms.
Consider this, from a report released last year by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce: Out of the 11.6 million jobs created in the postrecession economy, 11.5 million went to workers with at least some college education and, of those, 8.4 million went to workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher.
Even so, it is clear that the public’s perception of the value of higher education has dimmed in recent years.
To turn around what we believe to be misperceptions is not going to be easy or fast. We need to continue to address concerns about access and cost and to demonstrate the enormous range of possibilities available to those seeking a postsecondary education, whether in local community colleges or regional public universities, in faith-based institutions, liberal-arts colleges, or comprehensive research institutions.
Our system of higher education is a unique national asset — and we simply must do a better job of communicating that value to the larger society.
Molly Corbett Broad is president of the American Council on Education.
