Majority of MAGA-minded have negative view of college.

Columbus OH

Description

Survey results in 2017 suggested that typical conservatives had increasingly begun to share the president's dim view of higher ed. In a Pew survey, only 36 percent of Republican and GOP-leaning respondents said higher education had a positive effect on the direction of the country -- a steep drop-off from responses only two years before, although the slide had begun in 2016, before the election. (NOTE: This article has been updated from an earlier version to clarify when the poll numbers began dropping.) Results from another recent Pew survey indicate that those views have persisted. In July, 2019, only 33 percent of Republican survey respondents said higher ed had a positive effect. And 59 percent believed higher ed had a negative effect on the country’s direction, the highest number in the survey’s findings so far. Rather than a temporary blip, the Pew findings suggest a continuing challenge for college leaders hoping to maintain or repair a bipartisan consensus in support of postsecondary education. That Pew survey found 67 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning respondents had positive views of higher ed, a slight drop-off from two years prior. Over all, 50 percent of U.S. adults said they had positive views of postsecondary education. “It is certainly something we're aware of, and we do find it troubling,” said Dan Madzelan, associate vice president for government relations at the American Council on Education. “Higher education historically has not been caught up in any kind of partisan divide.”