BY MATTHEW BOEDY

Two recent major surveys on public opinion about higher education offer differing details but the same dark picture of public opinion about higher education. 

They also offer the same roadmap for faculty advocacy to reverse that dangerous trend. 

First, there was a Chronicle of Higher Education survey in early September. The Chronicle has written three stories on the results: here , here, and here. 

Then most recently, the AP released its poll in early October. 

The Chronicle said it had a nationally representative, random-sample survey of 1,025 adults. The AP said it also had a representative national poll of 1,095 adult respondents. For the stats experts reading this, the Chronicle survey margin of error was in the low 3 percent (depending on the question) and the AP poll had an overall margin of error of 4 percent. So both are good samples, though AP obviously had higher error margin but more responses. 

One certainly can slight both groups for asking people who have no direct link (other than paying taxes perhaps) to college campuses what is happening there. Like the AP asking its sample “to what extent can the following groups freely speak their minds on college and university campuses in the United States today.” But it is instructive to note the perception and why the overall opinion of higher education is tanking. 

I particularly found this AP question and available responses odd: “Which do you think is the bigger problem for each of the following these days?” The responses available were: “People being allowed to say harmful or misleading things” and “People being prevented from saying what they want.” The “for each” refers to college campuses, K–12 public schools, and social media. To lump those two other contexts with college campuses—especially when the survey was about higher education—seems dubious. And the two are not especially opposed or well-defined. 

I should note we don’t have access to the questions on the Chronicle survey (or I could not find them online). 

There were some helpful moments for comparison because both polls asked a similar question about the power of government to influence curriculum. The Chronicle poll noted “37 percent of respondents say that state governments should have a great deal or a good amount of sway” over college curriculum. The AP survey noted 30 percent of respondents think state governments should be able to restrict what professors teach at state universities.

While one third of respondents asking for the death of academic freedom is bad enough, the AP poll also noted that 47 percent of respondents said yes when asked if professors should be allowed to “teach a curriculum that includes polarizing ideas.” While 50 percent said no, the sharp division is clearly concerning. Fascinating is that only 38 percent wanted to ban professors from conducting “a scientific study on a topic some students find offensive.” I think the word “scientific” lessened the impact on that question. Clearly there is a public bias against “offensive” social science and humanities research.

Overall while the Chronicle survey showed wide appreciation and satisfaction of the public and its graduates with their degree programs and the value of college at large, the AP survey showed that life on campus and in classrooms is not treated as well by the public at large. 

These results are not news for me, the Georgia AAUP president. If you are part of a state conference in the South, you know these perceptions are hard to combat. This is why it is important for faculty to take more interest in the goings-on outside their classroom. Public opinion certainly influences budgets, to put a fine point on the matter. 

And budgets matter, as we have seen in the tragic tales at West Virginia University and Emporia State University among other places. Yet those places are not anomalies in one particular sense. Those tales reveal that higher education administrators writ large continue to press “accelerating” growth in some disciplines in the face of plummeting state funding and lack of willingness to raise tuition. They want top producing programs to expand more—thereby even more quickly killing those not producing as much. 

Combine that with the public divide on academic freedom and the only way forward is for all academic disciplines—those targeted by certain segments of the public for erasure from the academy and those more protected due to their ability for “accelerated growth”—to defend higher education together. 

There is no other path but solidarity. Old divisions between humanities and sciences, between small and large programs, between grant-funded research and service courses, between highly paid and underpaid—all these will leave the lesser in perilous positions. 

We have to persuade those who can be persuaded. And there are many in both parties, in every economic strata, every race, every state. The polls offer much to help us. 

Contributing editor Matthew Boedy is the Georgia AAUP president and professor at the University of North Georgia. He is on Twitter or X @matthewboedy.