Colleges Must Act Now to Regain Public Trust, AAC&U Says

The most recent Gallup poll of Americans’ confidence in higher education showed the first improvement in a decade: 42 percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, up from 36 percent in each of the past two years. But even if confidence in colleges and universities is trending upward, it’s still lower than where it was in 2015, 57 percent.

As colleges grapple with this public opinion problem, a report published Tuesday by the American Association of Colleges and Universities says that not only does low confidence create problems for institutions, it leaves them open to political attacks on their independence.

The report, “The Trust Agenda: A Framework for Advancing Trust in Higher Education,” suggests the root cause of low public trust is institutions’ lack of trustworthiness. To regain trust, university leaders must proactively take more accountability on behalf of their institutions, build stronger community partnerships and show their value—even to community members who never enroll, AAC&U says.

Establishing trustworthiness is about more than listing off data points to prove return on investment, AAC&U president Lynn Pasquerella told Inside Higher Ed. It’s about demonstrating reliability through action and building connections that foster confidence.

“Our thought was that it doesn’t matter how many facts we can produce. In a post-truth era, where controlling the narrative is often more important than the facts, it doesn’t matter what we say if we’re not trusted messengers,” Pasquerella said. “We’re taking seriously the real concerns and the criticism that our harshest critics have leveled against us.”

The paper offers colleges a five-step improvement plan: break down internal barriers and address “difficult questions,” develop stronger partnerships with the community, recommit to inclusive excellence by creating an environment that supports students from all backgrounds, more clearly tell the public how higher ed is an engine of social and economic mobility and key to the health of a democracy, and collaborate with other institutions to push back on government overreach.

In response to recent political attacks, many colleges took steps that AAC&U considered pre-emptive compliance, like closing student centers, defunding student organizations and firing staff.

Jeremy Young, AAC&U’s senior adviser for strategic initiatives and co-author of the report, said colleges have either doubled down on defending the “fraying” status quo or acquiesced in response to government criticism, losing academic freedom as a result. But colleges can maintain autonomy while pursuing reform, he argued.

“These are often conversations that are viewed as an either-or situation: You could either fight the administration or you can change what you’re doing,” he said. “We think that both are necessary, and that in fact [both] play complementary roles in advancing public trust.”

For example, colleges can take this both-and approach when addressing political attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs by restoring the programs it has shuttered while also reconsidering how they operate, the report suggests.

“We are not shying away from equity work. We don’t think that doing so benefits public trust, given that these programs are designed to break down identity-based barriers for students. They’re ultimately student success programs,” Young said. “But they are also not the only kind of barriers that need to be broken down.”

Colleges could also focus on promoting inclusion by promoting wraparound supports to address students’ basic needs, regardless of identity, and bolstering civic dialogue training to ensure students of all viewpoints feel heard, the report says.

Several studies have shown that the public’s trust in higher education is linked to the cost of college. A recent survey of more than 1,000 students by Inside Higher Ed found that a plurality (37 percent) attribute lack of college affordability, including high tuition prices, to declines in public trust. Similarly, in a recent survey by Strada of 5,500 students, parents and the general public, 76 percent of respondents said that colleges with a “very confusing” financial aid process “care more about making money than educating students”; only 49 percent said the same about colleges with a “straightforward” process.

The report suggests colleges experiment with innovative ways to address the problem of affordability. For example, colleges could ask whether they are ensuring an efficient, well-coordinated transfer of credits and being transparent about college cost.

Innovations around affordability can help institutions with “the fact that so many students are starting college but not completing it and then left with debt,” Pasquerella said.

“The report makes clear that to a large extent this is a report about leadership and a call to action to look at the ways in which we have contributed to the problem, not lapsing into an apologist stance, but making real change in a timely manner,” she said.