BY NEIL KRAUS

“The public has lost confidence in higher education.” This narrative is everywhere, its ubiquity reminiscent of the failing K–12 schools refrain post–A Nation at Risk. News stories about polling results, opinion pieces advocating increased online education, and consultants seeking to sell a wide range of products remind us of the public’s declining confidence in colleges and universities. Significantly, this narrative is essential in creating and maintaining a permanent austerity regime, despite many states having budget surpluses.

Because higher education is data driven, the assumption is that its purported failings, which have led to the public’s loss of confidence, are objectively true. Yet when we look carefully at the data of the higher education policy ecosystem, we find a universe of data funded by corporations, foundations, and ideologues primarily interested in advancing neoliberal policies, including permanent austerity.

In “Data Sources, Funding, and Austerity in Higher Education,” I argue that we must carefully examine the data driving higher education that has led us to the point where austerity has become the default policy. In turn, permanent austerity has enabled corporations and foundations to impose their stated priorities, including narrowing curriculum, substantially increasing online education, and, of course, more austerity itself, which fuels an entire industry of enrollment management products.

Official data from federal and state agencies tell the story of the real economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has long determined the typical education levels necessary to enter the hundreds of specific occupations it tracks. Current BLS data show that a significant majority of jobs—roughly 60 percent—typically require only a high school education or less, and the agency projects little change by 2032. The real economy is dominated by low-wage, low-education, low-skill jobs, the vast majority of which are non-unionized.

Official data also illustrate that educational attainment rates are at an all-time high. Roughly 63 percent of the population has some post–high school education, and 37 percent has at least a bachelor’s degree. These numbers are even higher for those in the workforce The population is substantially overeducated for the labor market, and underemployment rates are consistently high. Moreover, millions of people work in jobs requiring their degrees are also paid less. This is the real economy.

The public is keenly aware of the real economy. They live in it. Students correctly see college as their main chance at economic advancement in our low-wage, low-education labor market. So, millions end up taking a chance on college given the alternatives.

But the data of the real economy rarely makes an appearance in the higher education ecosystem. Instead, corporate- and foundation-funded data dominate media coverage and decision-making.  And because this data consistently purport to show a high education labor market, a failing education system, and an insufficiently skilled workforce, it serves the interests of corporations and the wealthy. These constituencies, driven by an overarching preference for austerity, want to keep the pressure on higher education and away from themselves and our neoliberal order that has allowed a small number of people to prosper, while the majority treads water or worse.

Of course, the public has lost confidence in higher education. Higher education has been held responsible for something it cannot do. Colleges and universities cannot change the labor market by giving as many people as possible degrees, or, in the language of educational consultants, “credentials,” “micro-credentials,” “stackable credentials,” or whatever else consultants are trying to sell higher education today. But declining public confidence is the best marketing slogan imaginable for those selling these products, just like the failing K–12 schools allowed for the proliferation of charters, vouchers, and test-based accountability decades ago.

Students and graduates blame themselves as well, as society tells them they must be a failure if they are among the one-third of individuals with at least bachelor’s degrees who are underemployed or the large number of bachelor’s and advanced degree holders working in low-paid jobs commensurate with their educational levels. And ultimately many citizens end up blaming higher education, allowing austerity to go unchecked.

Except for for-profit schools fleecing students through deceptive marketing strategies, colleges and universities are trying their best to educate their students. Students and graduates are trying their best as well.  But neither educators nor students can change the real economy.

Austerity continues unabated because higher education is incorrectly—and intentionally—blamed for things it can’t control. Education is just like any other policy area: dominated by interest groups. Corporate America is the chief architect and beneficiary of this declining confidence in higher education, intentionally setting it up to fail.

To get beyond this corporate framing of education, we must start to critically examine the date we use. Data from business interests and foundations with explicit policy agendas will, unsurprisingly, reflect the interests and preferences of these constituencies. This data will be used to dismantle higher education, as is happening in the current moment.

Data from federal and state agencies, as well as scholarly work, can begin to reframe the discussion of economic opportunity where it belongs—with employers and policymakers in our increasingly unequal, neoliberal economy.