Most Americans now believe that there cannot be too many people going to college, a reversal of previous findings, according to the report of a public-opinion survey on higher education released last week.
The report, “Great Expectations,” says 76 percent of the 1,820 adults surveyed late last year thought that the sky was the limit in terms of how many people pursued education and training beyond high school. In 1993, 54 percent of those surveyed had felt that “too many people are going to college instead of alternatives to college, where they can learn trades like plumbing or computer repair.”
The survey was prepared by Public Agenda, a nonprofit research group, and released by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, and the Institute for Research on Higher Education.
In other findings, the report says 87 percent of Americans surveyed agreed that a college education has become as important as a high-school diploma used to be. The study also found that Hispanic and African-American parents of high-school students were more likely than white parents to assign a high priority to higher education.
Researchers asked 605 parents, identified by race, to choose one thing that can most help a young person succeed. College education topped the responses of every racial group. But among Hispanic respondents, 65 percent said it was most important, compared with 47 percent of African-American parents and 33 percent of white parents.
At the same time, white students constitute 37 percent of those age 18 to 24 who participate in higher education, according to 1998 U.S. Census Bureau statistics. African-American students represent 30 percent of the total, and Hispanic students 20 percent.
The survey’s results challenge “common assumptions” on cost issues, said Deborah Wadsworth, president of Public Agenda. While most of those surveyed said they worried about college costs, 87 percent also agreed that “if someone really wants to go to college, they can find a way to pay for it.”
The survey also found that the majority of Americans said that they viewed their state’s colleges as doing an “excellent” or “good” job, but that their satisfaction often was not rooted in detailed knowledge of how higher education is governed or financed. If colleges increase costs or limit access in bad economic times, people may begin to pay more attention to higher education and voice “considerable anger,” Ms. Wadsworth said.
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Page: A38
