Virginians Unhappy With the Cost of College

Have you noticed that Kamala Harris’ gimmicky plans for price controls don’t include college and university tuition? Odd, because the costs of higher education have skyrocketed in recent years and the feds actually have leverage over these institutions because they receive substantial federal dollars. On top of that, consumers question the value of these costly degrees. -kerry

Today James Bacon explores Virginian’s discontent with the cost of higher education in the Old Dominion.

by James A. Bacon

In perhaps the most interesting question posed in the Virginia Commonwealth University Wilder School’s recent poll, 809 Virginians were asked if they thought the $26,500 average tuition charged by four-year colleges in the state was “worth it.”

Fifty-five percent disagreed — 30% strongly.

Higher ed faces a crisis in the value proposition it’s selling. Rising tuitions are pricing out less affluent Virginians, while the perception of rampant political correctness is turning off the half of the population that identifies as conservative.

Good question, Wilder School. I hope university administrators are paying attention.

Fortunately for entrenched university leadership, the population’s marketplace dissatisfaction has yet to translate into political dissatisfaction. Compared to other issues such as inflation, abortion, and immigration, “education,” which encompasses K-12 controversies as well as higher-ed, ranked as a top concern for only 6%.

Republicans were twice as likely as Democrats (36.2% versus 18.6%) to strongly disagree with the proposition that college tuition is “worth it,” suggesting a significant partisan or ideological component to the attitude. Likewise, males were more likely than females (35.8% versus 23.5%) to strongly disagree. Those in middle-income ranges were more likely to strongly disagree than lower- and upper-income respondents, although the disparities were less pronounced.

I often wonder why higher-ed hasn’t become a political issue as potent as K-12. An important difference between voters’ attitudes toward K-12 education and higher-ed, I conjecture, is that families have no alternative but uprooting and moving to another locality if they don’t like their kid’s public school. By contrast, families have hundreds of choices about where their kid can apply to college. And if they’re not happy at one university, they can transfer to another. Families may not be happy with the higher-ed value proposition, but they don’t feel as captive as they do by public K-12 schools. 

Republished with permission from Bacon’s Rebellion.