Respondents report different levels of concern for biased professors, life training.
A new survey finds that a majority of Americans think that the state of higher education in America is in poor shape, though respondents are divided on the reasons why, in part based on their political alignments.
The Pew Research Center’s recent survey found that around six-in-ten Americans (61 percent) believe that higher education in moving in the wrong direction. However, when respondents were divided into political alignments, a contrast became clear.
73 percent of Republican respondents said that they believe higher education is heading in the wrong direction. 52 percent of Democrats agreed, while 46 percent of Democratic respondents said they believe higher education is going in the right direction.
However, younger Democrats were more likely than older Democrats to have a negative outlook on higher education’s future. According to Pew, “61% of Democrats ages 18 to 34 say the higher education system is going in the wrong direction, compared with 48% of Democrats ages 50 to 64 and 40% of those 65 and older.”
Among all respondents who stated their belief that higher education was moving in the wrong direction, 84 percent said increasingly high tuition is a major factor. Sixty-five percent said that students are not getting necessary skills to succeed in the real world, 54 percent said students are too protected from views they believe are offensive, and 50 percent said professors bringing personal and political biases and beliefs into the classroom are a major factor.
Within those responses, however, a split once again emerged along party lines. Seventy-three percent of Republican respondents said students not getting necessary skills is a major concern, while 56 percent of Democrats said the same.
Most notable among issues where the two factions disagreed was the state of campus politics: 75 percent of Republicans cited “too much concern about protecting students from views they might find offensive” as a problem, while just 31 percent of Democrats agreed. Seventy-nine percent of Republicans said biased professors are a factor, just 17 percent of Democrats expressed the same sentiment.
The survey concluded on a unifying note: of all the respondents, 87 percent said it’s important to allow free expression and speech, even if students find the speech offensive, while just 11 percent believed that limiting potentially offensive views is more important.
MORE: College grads feel less patriotic than non-college grads: survey
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