American views of higher ed decline, once again

Quick post today, as I travel across several American cities: United States attitudes towards higher education soured yet again, according to a new Gallup poll. The main question asked this time was “How important is a college education today — very important, fairly important or not too important?” It’s one Gallup has asked regularly for decades. Here are the results, measured against annual reports dating back to the late 1970s: Look at that sheer plummet from 2013! The “very important” answer is less than half what it was just thirteen years ago. It went from a supermajority to not even one third of the responses. As the article observes, “As recently as 2013, more than twice as many U.S. adults (70%) said college was very important.” (Shameless note: 2013 is also the year of peak enrollment. Another bit of evidence for peak higher ed?) And the rapid takeoff of “not too important” shot up from 6% to nearly 30%, representing a five fold increase. At the same time the leading…