Why Americans Soured on Higher Education

Victor Joecks on Jul 27, 2026

Even colleges can't fool all of the people all of the time.

Just 38% of Americans have high confidence in higher education, according to a new Gallup poll. That's down from 57% in 2015. Gallup found the three main reasons for this lack of confidence are political agenda, cost and not preparing students for a future career.

This is a stunning -- and much-needed -- fall from grace.

Many schools and politicians spent decades pushing ever more kids into college. Sen. Bernie Sanders even sponsored the "College for All Act." It was endorsed by numerous left-wing groups, including the American Federation of Teachers and National Education Association.

These voices assured high school students that higher education was a virtual guarantee of financial security. You've likely heard some version of this factoid. College graduates earn $1 million more than non-graduates during their careers.

This effort certainly convinced more people to attend college. In 1974, just under 48% of high school graduates attended college. That number topped 70% in 2009. In 2014, it was 68.4%.

But for many, the promised financial benefits didn't materialize -- even as tuition soared. More than 9.5 million student loan borrowers are currently in default, according to a recent AP analysis. That includes a 4.2-million-borrower jump from April 2025 to March 2026. One of the reasons for the sudden jump appears to be the end of the COVID-era payment pause. Borrowers go into default if they don't make a payment for nine months.

Universities once introduced students to the great ideas and authors of Western Civilization. Now, many professors emphasize America's sins, not her greatness. Debate once flourished on college campuses. Now, colleges routinely allow students to shout down speakers who believe men aren't women or harass Jewish students.

Further, elite universities routinely discriminate against white and Asian applicants.

Would-be students have noticed. In 2024, college attendance was under 63% among high school graduates. The drop-off has been especially pronounced among male students.

A decline in college enrollment has led to a wave of college closures. In the 2013-14 school year, there were more than 7,200 postsecondary institutions accepting federal financial aid. In the 2024-25 school year, there were 5,760. That's a 20% decrease.

This doesn't mean UNLV or Stanford are on the verge of bankruptcy. Many of the closed schools were technical schools that offered certificates, not four-year degrees. But hundreds of degree-granting institutions, especially in the Northeast, have closed too. America's declining birth rate is another daunting problem for many struggling institutions.

Now, colleges face a new challenge -- students using AI to cheat. Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano recently demonstrated how widespread this problem is. For one economics class, he let his class of 86 take home the midterm. The average score was 96%. In past classes, the average midterm score had been between 65 and 80%.

Since he suspected many of his students used AI to cheat, he changed the final to an in-class exam. Twenty-seven students either dropped the class or didn't take the final. The average score was 48.5%. Two students who scored 100% on the midterm scored a zero on the final. The data suggested only a handful of students didn't use AI on the midterm.

Put this all together. College is ridiculously expensive, saddling many students with loans they'll spend decades struggling to repay. Colleges shelter students from authors like Shakespeare and competing ideas. They practice racial discrimination in admissions. And now, students can get A's by outsourcing their thinking to ChatGPT. Even propped up by government subsidies, that's not a great sales pitch.

Here's the irony. The ongoing college collapse is driven by knowledge, not ignorance.

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Victor Joecks is a columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal and host of the Sharpening Arrows podcast. Email him at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or follow @victorjoecks on X. To find out more about Victor Joecks and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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