When I first started as a young legislative staffer in California in the early 1980’s, I got my very first upfront taste of partisan divides on a variety of policy issues between Democrats and Republicans. Big government or small government? Longer prison sentences or more rehabilitation? Increased or decreased welfare payments, they argued about most everything. But over the years, as I progressed in my career and relocated back to Washington, I noticed that when it came to higher education, both sides of the aisle seemed to agree it was a good thing.
Perhaps there wasn’t enough money every budget cycle to fund the system appropriately, but the idea that everyone who was qualified should have the opportunity to earn a college degree wasn’t a partisan issue. And more importantly, universities were seen as a trusted source for information and research.
So this latest Gallup Poll has me concerned. Confidence in U.S. colleges is quite different depending on your political orientation with more than half of Democrats having a great deal of confidence in higher education and only a third of Republicans feeling the same way. According to Gallup, much of Republicans low confidence stems from a belief that universities are liberally biased and don’t allow students to think for themselves or be allowed to advocate a more conservative agenda. Democrats with low confidence in U.S. colleges point to skyrocketing tuition and deteriorating quality.
While there are surely some colleges and universities that fit one or some of these partisan stereotypes, my experience is that public research universities like the UW are much more open and tolerant of a variety of viewpoints and certainly of both high quality and more affordable than the average voter might think.
The challenge of course for all of public higher education is getting this message out to taxpayers and prospective students and their families. Given these sobering poll results, it’s a challenge we cannot afford not to address.