Reading the survey, they did seem to phrase the question so that it would be reasonable to think that they were asking about whether the institutions in question were currently improving the country or contributing to it’s problems. But the survey was not detailed enough to make much in the way of conclusions about the fine points of the issue.
Even so, I could see respondents not thinking about the vast majority of schools that provide an excellent education, and focusing on those more in the recent news for negative behavior.
I’m not surprised to see this survey called a “misrepresentation” here. The survey question asked was “do you think higher education has a positive or negative impact on the way things are going in this country.” “Higher education” means colleges and universities. It does not say which ones, or qualify by “state vs. private” or “well-known vs. unknown” or “large or small.” To claim that the Republicans who replied “a negative impact” were thinking of a state school rather than MIT is to make a ridiculous assumption. Furthermore, it is inconsistent with literally decades of derision of educational institutions, famous ones included, by right wing groups like the so-called “Accuracy in Academia.”
This attitude is yet another example of fundamental institutions of this country being undermined by conservative leaders because of the fear of progressive thought. In some cases, literally, due to draconian budget cuts.
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Yeah, but I’m a sponge with tenure. And my kid gets free tuition. HA HA!
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And…
- Which diseases get research funding.
- Which treatments we’re allowed to test.
- What sort of discussion section opinions can get past peer review.
- In what areas and to what extent is evidence allowed to influence policy.
- Demographics and behaviour of senior academia.
Etc.
Whether it should be or not, modern science is heavily political.
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Both.
It’s a basic credential that should be available to all wealthy white folks, regardless of academic merit. Who are, by definition, special and exceptional people.
Apparently.
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Well duh, but ‘reality has a left wing bias’ is meant to point out the incontrovertible fact that a great deal of left wing ‘ideology’ as such is actually supported by research, while right wing views are debunked every day by science.
So IMO, making statements implying any sort of equivalence between left and right is dangerous and misleading.
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There’s also the issue that there are plenty of folks who think all college beyond STEM degrees is worthless.
Many of the comments sections for articles similar to this one (I’m not implicating BB, by the way), devolve quickly into which college education is “worth it”.
According to said experts, all people with humanities degrees work at Starbucks, so it’s not really just Republicans who think higher ed is “bad”.
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Not only in the USA. The more a political party leans to the right, the less it likes higher education. This is a direct consequence of universities fostering independent thinking and right-wing parties being defined by blindly following a leader without independently thinking.
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Would you go to an appointment with a medical professional called, “Doctor Ow”?
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So Humanities degrees have a value then, as they provide a cheap workforce, hobbled by college debt, to do the jobs no-one else would do 
#latestagecapitalism
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A side question. I have read that the pay in engineering or science in the USA is often not enough to cover the cost of study. That is probably not true for computer graduates working for google, but is apparently a problem in other domains. Or is it? Is what I read true? Because if it is, these degrees are simply a door to bankruptcy.
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That’s a very informative and telling chart. Much obliged for digging it up.
If you think about it… What was on the news 'round about mid-2015? Massive student protests in places like the University of Missouri. Hell you don’t even have to slant it (Fox did, because of course they did) just play the footage of kids yelling and/or breaking things on a loop. You can have someone drone over it about how it is a good thing and it still looks bad. The enrollment for University of Missouri cratered just after if memory serves, because—again—even if you plan to go there for most people protests like that just look bad.
It especially looks bad if you work three jobs to just barely make ends meet and you look at the telly and see what—from your point of view—are massively overprivileged young snots whining. And you might be wrong, but it sure as hell doesn’t feel it, and so by the way affinities spread, your opinion of higher ed in general falters.
Fox barely had to make an effort, though of course, they did. How could they resist?
Personally, I think higher education is bad for America. You encumber your young with life-shattering debt and then funnel most of them into what from the outside look like insufficiently rigorous degrees. I do not fetishize work skills, by any means, but I am in favor of skill and a degree ought to equip you to do something. This something could be ‘compose poetry in Vietnamese,’ of course, and you know, Vietnamese is a beautiful language and we could always use more poetry (even if nobody will pay you for this skill), but you have to learn something.
A lot of American college (from a definite outsider’s perspective) seems to be a class marker—an elegant if repulsive solution to the problem of coordinating class (in the Weberian sense) discrimination in a diverse society where shibboleths are less useful.
That said, I strongly suspect that my reasons for taking a dim view of American higher ed are not the same as that of the GOP.
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fittingly enough, from that same poll, Republicans trust in “National Media” has also plummeted, though I suspect that this is mostly evidence that Fox is somehow avoiding being identified as part of the “National Media” you know, independent, scrappy up-starts that they are.
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I’m pretty sure anti-intellectual Republicans will eat me and my kids before I get tenure.
…said a bunch of lawyers.
This is also where my mind went when reading the article. It’s easy (and reasonable) to jump to the conclusion that everyone to the right side of the spectrum that dislikes higher education holds that opinion due to a belief that it “indoctrinates liberalism” (of whom I have met my fair share and also know this is the common conservative trope). I have met plenty of folks on that side, too, however, that dislike the effort to push all students toward university level education for the reason of the student debt bubble and how that disadvantages recent graduates, to say nothing of where that debt leaves college dropouts that may have had no business of matriculating in the first place.
Of course that is anecdotal, but I’d be curious to see the poll questions themselves.
EDIT: I now see the link to the Pew results that contain more detail. Initially only read the Vice summary of the results when I commented.
