Why Polling Higher Education’s Winners Alone Misses the Mark
A survey of graduates’ parents cannot debunk higher education’s mounting problems—or the growing public skepticism toward America’s colleges.
Responding to: parentPOLL Volume 1 Issue 1; Published by Art & Science Group LLC
The core disagreement: When you amplify the voices of only a cross-section of higher education’s customers, a skewed picture emerges, cloaking the true state of our universities—and our nation’s future.
WHAT THEY GOT RIGHT
A recent parentPOLL published by Art & Science Group, LLC accurately reports that most parents of recent college graduates are happy with their children’s decisions to attend. Eighty-three percent of these mothers and fathers, in fact, believe that college is “worth it.” A further 73 percent “report they would have made the same decisions about their child’s college experience.”
WHERE THEY GO WRONG
The poll is a classic example of survivorship bias. By solely surveying the parents of college graduates, e.g., success stories, parentPOLL significantly distorts a real problem: whether the educational juice is worth the financial, civic, and cultural squeeze. The pollsters even claim to have debunked the two “myths” that the “college cost outweighs its value to students” and “higher education is broken and needs significant reform.”
That, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, is theorizing ahead of your data. How a select group of parents feels about college tells little about the opinions of Americans in general, including parents of dropouts and those who never attended college, as well as young people themselves. It reveals even less about colleges’ actual performance.’
When all Americans are canvassed, a different picture emerges. According to a 2025 Gallup poll, the “perceived importance of college” has hit “a new low.” Only 35 percent of Americans say that a college education is “very important,” down from 75 percent in 2010. Moreover, a majority of Americans don’t expect things to quickly improve. A 2025 Pew Research poll showed that 70 percent of Americans believe higher education is “going in the wrong direction.” Interestingly, this expectation holds true for both Republicans (77 percent) and Democrats (65 percent).
The poll is a classic example of survivorship bias.
THE REAL STORY
When viewed as a whole, Americans are clearly no longer embracing a college education as universally healthy for their young people, instead questioning academic track records on free speech and viewpoint diversity. Forty-six percent of survey respondents, for instance, say that universities do a “fair/poor” job of “providing opportunities for students to express their own opinions.” Forty-five percent, meanwhile, say they do a “fair/poor” job of “exposing students to a wide range of opinions.”
Young Americans are also expressing their lack of faith in universities by choosing not to enroll. Just 62.8 percent of 2024 high school graduates chose to attend colleges or universities in the following year, down from 70.1 percent in 2009.
WHY THIS MATTERS
Incomplete data obfuscates real problems in American higher education. Yes, most graduates (and their parents) are happy with their choices, likely to enter productive careers, out-earn degree-less peers, and eventually pay off student loans. Yet with the average graduation rate hovering around 60 percent, many students will not experience that success, often carrying debt but no credential to show for it.
What’s more, colleges often tolerate or encourage illiberal behavior and norms. Focusing on whether graduates are “happy” with their academic decisions ignores whether their learned illiberalism is positive for the country carrying a significant portion of higher education’s tab.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Higher education does not exist merely to satisfy those who succeed within its walls; instead, it is meant to prepare citizens, cultivate intellectual seriousness, and justify the public investment it receives. When nearly half the country questions whether universities uphold free expression or provide genuine intellectual diversity—among other issues—complacency is irresponsible. Honest accounting is therefore crucial for academic renewal.
Jenna A. Robinson, Senior Editor of Education at Restoring the West, is president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal. Follow her on X @jarobinson1.
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A poll is only as good as both the sample population to whom the poll issue is proposed and how well the polling issue/question is drafted or presented. Frequently polls are only delivered to the chosen echo chamber audience and/or it is phrased in a nonneutral/biased manner. Personally, that is why I have very little use for polls. Now if polls were required to be drafted along the same strictures as the scientific method, and applied to a true cross representative populations sample/group, they might have some actual validity. Barring that, they are just echo chambers of those putting out the poll. I doubt that there are many parents of graduates of higher ed who want to admit they feel like fools for forking out so much money for so little in return. Most people do not bother to actually look at the question asked or who is asking it. Foolish to rely on a poll. JMO.
Another issue that in my opinion largely invalidates the "Satisfaction Survey" is the time lag. Just because you're "satisfied" with that huge meal you just ate and "would do it again," doesn't mean you've factored in the massive bout of indigestion you're likely to experience, or the long-term impact on your health.
The only real measure of the worth of something like college is longitudinal: twenty years later, are the kids who went to college better off or worse off than their non-college peers? Judging from the unending parade of whingers bitching about how they can't pay off their debts when they're making min wage as baristas, I'd say the answer is no.
Also, there's the cost-benefit aspect. College today is eyewateringly more expensive--even accounting for inflation--than it was when I was there in the 1970s. And because of the massive growth in college attendance--spurred in large part by the selfsame government subsidies that now afflict the erstwhile students--the currency that the college degree represented has been debased...just like any currency whose volume is inflated beyond the economy's ability to absorb it.