Gallup Poll Finds U.S. Higher Ed Confidence at 38%

Public confidence in American higher education has declined again, erasing a modest recovery seen last year, according to a new national survey released this week. The Gallup poll, conducted in partnership with the Lumina Foundation, found that 38% of U.S. adults now have a "great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in the sector, down from 42% in 2025.

The drop marks a reversal after confidence had ticked upward from a low point in 2024. The current figure remains significantly lower than a decade ago, when 57% of Americans expressed high confidence in higher education in 2015. The survey of 1,001 adults was conducted via telephone from June 1 to June 15 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 to 5 percentage points.

The decline in confidence was bipartisan but most pronounced among Democrats, whose high confidence fell 11 percentage points from last year to 50%, a record low for the group since tracking began. Republicans' confidence also dipped slightly, by 2 points, to 23%. Over the long term, however, Republicans have shown the steepest decline, falling 33 percentage points since 2015.

Experts and the survey data point to three persistent concerns driving skepticism:...