Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Trump Higher Ed Cuts

A majority of Americans oppose the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to higher ed funding, according to summer poll results released Wednesday. And several of the president’s other moves—including targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs—aren’t popular, either.

The results suggest the White House’s ongoing targeting of colleges and universities isn’t winning points for President Trump, of whom more Americans disapprove than approve, according to major polling averages. That’s despite the fact that Americans say higher ed is far from perfect.

“There are a variety of very significant concerns that Americans have with higher education that are not unrelated to the topics the Trump administration cites or references as justifications for their crackdown,” said Matt Baum, the Marvin Kalb Chair of Global Communications at the Harvard Kennedy School, a public policy professor and one of the survey researchers. Still, “the fact that Americans have these concerns doesn’t necessarily translate to agreeing with the corrective measures the Trump administration is advocating and implementing.”

Neither the White House nor the Education Department responded to Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment Wednesday.

The researchers—from Northeastern University, Rutgers University at New Brunswick, the University of Rochester and Harvard—asked survey takers whether they supported the administration’s freezing of “billions of dollars in federal research grants to universities.” The results showed that 54 percent of Americans disapproved of the funding freeze, 34 percent of them strongly. Only 22 percent approved or strongly approved.

The researchers also asked about the administration’s effort to “drastically” reduce indirect research cost reimbursements—which they described to the survey takers as “the amount of grant money universities can use to cover research-related costs like buildings and equipment.” Just over half (51 percent) of Americans said they opposed this, including 31 percent who strongly objected. Again, only 22 percent approved or strongly approved.

The survey also found the president’s targeting of diversity in higher ed to be unpopular. Just under half of Americans said they disapproved or strongly disapproved of the administration ending student visa programs for some universities, while only a quarter said they approved or strongly approved. When told that the federal government had ordered universities to cut DEI programs, 47 percent of Americans said they disapproved or strongly disapproved, while 29 percent approved or strongly approved.

The new survey adds to others that show public confidence in higher ed remains high compared to other U.S. institutions. A quarter of Americans in this survey said they have “a lot” of trust in colleges and universities to do what’s right, and another 50 percent expressed “some” trust, leaving just 25 percent who said they trust postsecondary institutions “not too much” or “not at all.” The only groups that performed better were the military and two groups that are often connected to colleges and universities: hospitals and doctors, and scientists and researchers.

The White House was the institution in which the highest share of Americans—over a third—expressed no trust. Another quarter said they have “not too much” trust in it.

A Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy poll released last month also found significant, and growing, confidence in higher ed institutions—more confidence than in police or the medical system.

The survey report also broke down the results by political and demographic group, and each had more members express a lot of trust in higher ed institutions than no trust. Americans who are well acquainted with universities expressed the most trust; 39 percent of those with graduate degrees said they had a lot of trust, while just 5 percent expressed no trust. Next came Democrats, of whom 36 percent said they had a lot of trust and 3 percent expressed none. Then came Americans who make more than $100,000 annually, at 34 percent with a lot of trust and 6 percent with none.

The group with the least trust in colleges and universities was Republicans, 11 percent of whom said they had no trust. Still, a greater share of them—20 percent—said they had a lot of trust. Also expressing minimal trust in higher ed were Americans age 65 and older, 10 percent of whom said they had no trust, and rural Americans, Americans who only graduated high school and men. In each of those groups, 9 percent said they had no trust.

Also, more Americans in each state and in Washington, D.C., said they somewhat or strongly approved of U.S. universities and of their state’s public university system than said they somewhat or strongly disapproved of them.

The online survey, conducted from July 3 to Aug. 1, received nearly 32,000 responses from people 18 and older, the researchers said. Baum said they hope to find enough resources to make this an ongoing survey, called the American Higher Education Barometer.

The survey also measured Americans’ key concerns with higher ed. Seventy percent of Americans said they were moderately or extremely concerned about tuition costs and student debt, and almost as many said the same about campus racism. Over 60 percent expressed moderate or extreme concerns about free speech, antisemitism and what universities teach, while over 50 percent said the same regarding Islamophobia, liberal bias, the treatment of international students and transgender athletes’ participation in women’s sports.

“Despite strong foundational support, higher education faces universal concerns that transcend partisan boundaries,” the survey report says. “Majorities of respondents report at least some concern about each of these issues.”

But the results don’t shed light on why Americans are concerned about these issues or what they think should be done about them—for instance, the survey didn’t ask what types of speech they thought was being suppressed, whether they were concerned about racism against minorities or white people, or whether they worried that trans women were being allowed on sports teams or being barred from them.

Among the report’s recommendations to university leaders: “Acknowledge concerns proactively rather than dismissing them as partisan attacks.”