Americans’ Trust In Higher Education On The Rise, Poll Says

A Gallup poll released Wednesday suggests public trust in colleges has gone up from a near-10 year low.

The poll, published on July 16, notes a 6% overall increase in those saying they have  “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education since 2024. This goes against a long-term trend of decreasing trust in higher education, on the decline since at least 2015, according to Gallup.

“The reasons for this low confidence are painfully clear: rising tuition, staggering debt, misalignment with the labor market, and a sense that higher education is more focused on selectivity and rankings than student success,” a post published by the Lumina Foundation, an independent foundation that funds college application-related startups, says.

A Gallup poll from 2024 corroborates some of these problems, with 28% of respondents saying they are not confident in higher education because of costs and expenses. Additionally, 9% said their lack of confidence was due to poor quality education, and 7% said it was due to inequality in the application process.

However, the largest reason for lack of confidence in higher education, according to the Gallup poll, was politics. Just over 40% of those with low confidence said they were distrustful because of its political agenda, with 25% saying they think college is indoctrinating and 17% saying they think it’s too liberal.

This appears to line up with the difference in perception of college between Republicans and Democrats. According to the 2024 Gallup poll, only 20% of Republicans were confident in higher education, compared to 56% of Democrats and 35% of Independents. Nationally, there was a 21% decrease in confidence in higher education since 2015.

This difference is made even starker when comparing the education levels of the two parties. According to Pew Research, Republicans have a 6% lead over Democrats among people with no college degree. Meanwhile, Democrats have a 13% lead over Republicans among people with at least a Bachelor’s degree.

The education think tank Changing Higher Education suggests part of this is due to “public figures and political leaders” who “have amplified this divide by criticizing colleges as out of touch with American values.”

However, the latest Gallup poll bucks this decade-long trend. 

There was a 6% increase in people saying they have high confidence in higher education, and a 9% decrease in people saying they have low confidence in higher education. This is the first increase measured by Gallup since 2015, when it started polling this question.

This increase was seen across all political parties and racial demographics, as well as an increase in confidence for both two-year and four-year institutions.

Most people who are confident in higher education are in favor of it due to the value of education, according to Gallup. Since 2024, there was a 7% increase in people who are confident due to the innovations colleges produce. 

However, despite the overall increase in confidence, those who are distrustful of colleges due to political reasons grew from 28% to 38% in 2025, suggesting that while the overall number of people who distrust higher education shrank, those who are still distrustful are gravitating around political reasons.