Americans are turning against higher education. At least, that’s what many of them say.
Only 31 percent of Americans now consider a college education “very important,” according to a Gallup poll conducted in August and released this month. That’s a record low and a stunning decline from 70 percent in 2013.
The shift isn’t confined to groups that have historically been skeptical of higher education. Even women, Democrats, Black and Hispanic Americans and college graduates themselves — people who traditionally placed a greater importance on college — have also registered double-digit declines in their approval of higher education in recent years.
But here’s the reality: American behavior hasn’t changed nearly as much as American opinion. College enrollment has remained remarkably steady.
Let’s start with new high school graduates.
The latest data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, released last month, shows that the share of high school graduates enrolling in two- or four-year colleges immediately after high school has remained steady. Among graduates from low-poverty high schools, 74 percent enrolled in college in the fall of 2025, up slightly from 73 percent in 2024. Among graduates from high-poverty high schools, the rate was 51 percent in both years.
The National Student Clearinghouse data don’t go back far enough to tell us what immediate college-going looked like decades ago. For that, we have to turn to the federal government, where the National Center for Education Statistics has documented a slump over the longer term. The immediate college-going rate fell from 68 percent in 2014 to 63 percent in 2024.
That’s a meaningful 5 percentage-point drop. But compare it with the collapse in public enthusiasm for college: The share of Americans saying college is “very important” fell 39 percentage points over roughly the same period.
And when we look at total college enrollment — including people who don’t go immediately after high school, as well as graduate students — the picture also doesn’t show a collapse in college-going. In fact, the number of enrolled students has been rising since 2022.
The increase is even more dramatic over the long term. Nearly 20 million students were enrolled in higher education in 2024, up substantially from fewer than 16 million in the early 2000s.
That said, the increase hasn’t been a straight line; today’s enrollment is still short of the all-time high of 21 million students in 2010 and 2011.
That bump happened because college enrollment is countercyclical. When jobs are plentiful, young adults pursue work. When the economy is weak and jobs are scarce, more people go to school.
Enrollment surged between 2008 and 2011, when the country was reeling from the Great Recession. And it decreased after 2011, as the job market strengthened.
Still, we might have expected enrollment to have grown more than it did because the number of potential college students increased. U.S. births began rising after 1998, and 18 years later there were roughly 900,000 more high school graduates in 2016 than in 1998.
Yet college enrollment did not rise proportionally. Could declining faith in higher education be restraining what would otherwise have been greater growth in college enrollment? That’s possible.
Why might opinions and actions diverge, when it comes to higher education? Other surveys provide some clues.
A recent Lumina Foundation-Gallup survey found that 73 percent of adults without a college degree or credential said earning a two- or four-year degree is at least as important as it was 20 years ago. So did 69 percent of college graduates. And when Gallup asked parents what they would prefer their children do after high school, a majority chose a two- or four-year degree. (The Lumina Foundation is among the many funders of The Hechinger Report.)
Americans may be increasingly critical of higher education without being ready to give up on it. People can believe that college is too expensive, too political, overrated or no longer worth what it costs — and still believe that a college degree is the best bet for themselves or their own children.
Our opinions about college have changed dramatically. Our behavior, at least so far, hasn’t.
Marina Villeneuve contributed reporting to this story.
Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.
This story about college enrollment was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
