Poll: Higher ed confidence wanes as Iowa faces funding, enrollment challenges

With under two years to go until the 2025 deadline that Iowa set for itself to get at least 70 percent of its workforce some form of education or training after high school, a new Gallup poll out today reveals confidence in higher education has plummeted — especially among Republicans.

Where 57 percent of Americans had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education in 2015 — about the time Iowa Republican elected leaders set the goal of increasing the percentage of its workforce with postsecondary education or training from 58 to 70 percent by 2025 — today that confidence score has slid 21 percentage points to just 36 percent.

Meanwhile — according to the national poll — the percentage of respondents voicing “very little” confidence in higher ed has swelled from 9 percent in 2015 to 22 percent. That 22 percent is contrasted by the 17 percent with a “great deal” of confidence and the 19 percent with “a lot.”

The doubts and differences between 2015 and 2023 are strongest among Republicans, with just 19 percent expressing a great deal or a lot of confidence in higher ed today — down 37 points from 56 percent in 2015.

But where a majority of every major subgroup expressed confidence in higher ed in 2015, only one subgroup had a majority reporting a great deal or a lot of confidence today: Democrats. And even among Democrats, the percentage with confidence slid from 68 to 59 percent.

In fact, respondents in every category lost at least some faith in higher ed over the last eight years — including those with college and postgraduate degrees. Confidence in higher ed among those with postgrad degrees dropped 17 percentage points from 67 to 50 percent, for example.

“Americans’ confidence in higher education, which showed a marked decrease between 2015 and 2018, has declined further to a new low point,” according to a Gallup statement. “While Gallup did not probe for reasons behind the recent drop in confidence, the rising costs of postsecondary education likely play a significant role.”

Student expenses, legislative support

Tuition and fees — and costs like room and board, books and transportation — have increased across Iowa’s higher education system, including its public, private and community colleges and universities.

Where tuition and fees for a full-time resident undergraduate at the University of Iowa in 2020 reached $9,830, for example, it’s up to $10,964 this fall. The private Coe College in Cedar Rapids has seen its tuition and fees swell from $47,220 to $52,576 over that span.

Iowa’s Board of Regents for years has tied tuition increases to shortcomings in legislative funding — with lawmakers either cutting resources or declining to fully fund the universities’ appropriations requests.

This year, for example, instead of increasing general education support for the regents by $32 million — as requested — the Republican-led Iowa Legislature appropriated no additional general education funding for the three public universities. Instead, lawmakers designated $7.1 million in additional support for three specific asks on each campus: $2.8 million for nursing initiatives at the UI; $2.8 million for STEM activities at Iowa State University; and $1.5 million for teacher-education efforts at the University of Northern Iowa.

In discussing their funding decisions and probing the public universities before deciding what to allocate, Republican lawmakers raised questions about how campus leaders spend public money — especially around diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

“For too long, the DEI bureaucracies at our institutions of higher education have been used to impose ideological conformity and promote far-left political activism … all while spending literally millions in the process,” Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, said in March. “They push this woke agenda on faculty. They push it on staff. But most importantly, they push on the students.”

Iowa impact

Although Gallup didn’t release region- or state-specific data for its recent higher education polling, Iowa’s political and age demographics show it could be impacted by the confidence slide — potentially hindering its efforts to get more of its workforce postsecondary education.

The Pew Research Center reports a growing percentage of Iowans lean Republican and an increasing percent are over age 65. According to the Gallup poll, confidence in higher education among Americans 55 and older has dropped from 55 to 31 percent.

Perhaps more relevant though, are those age 18 to 34 — more traditionally enrolling in postsecondary education. Confidence among that group has fallen nationally from 60 to 42 percent, according to the poll.

That squares with higher-ed interest statewide, according to the Iowa Statewide Longitudinal Data System. Interest in attending community college among Iowa high school graduates has fallen from 38 percent in 2011-12 to 30 percent in 2020-21; interest in attending private college among that group over that span has dropped from 13 to 11 percent.

Although interest in attending a public four-year university has increased among Iowa high school graduates from 26 to 27 percent over that time, it has fallen from a peak of 29 percent in the fall of 2015 during that period.

Iowa College Aid, created by the Iowa General Assembly in 1963 to serve as Iowa’s student financial aid agency, has kept tabs on Iowa’s progress toward its 70 percent goal and most recently — in its 2022 report — found 67 percent of Iowans ages 25 to 64 had some college after high school.

Of the total, 21 percent had “some college, no degree” and 46 percent had an associate’s, bachelor’s, graduate, or professional degree.

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com