The American Action Forum released a new national survey Wednesday "examining the public’s views on higher education, including tuition costs, the role of Federal aid, higher education responsibility, and alternative education programs:"
In a new AAF video, Public Opinion Strategies' Glen Bolger broke down the poll, which revealed among other things that nearly 70 percent of respondents feel individual students and parents are responsible for getting kids to college:
The poll, conducted by Glen Bolger and Jim Hobart of Public Opinion Strategies, finds that more than 9 in 10 respondents (92 percent) believe that college costs are expensive. Additionally, nearly 7 in 10 (68 percent) of respondents feel that individual students or their parents are responsible for making sure they have an opportunity to gain a college degree, rather than governments or universities;
Other Key Findings From the Survey Include:
• 54 percent of respondents agree that increased Federal spending on student loans and grants has led tuition costs to rise;
• Just 34 percent of respondents feel that it is the role of either the Federal or State governments to control college costs;
• 52 percent of respondents believe that a four-year college degree is not worth $26,000 in debt upon graduating.
• 55 percent of respondents oppose giving the federal government the authority to set price controls on public colleges and universities;
• Respondents strongly favor prior learning assessments and open online courses as viable alternatives to traditional college classrooms.
The AAF's Douglas Holtz-Eakin also discussed three factors that he believes are causing college costs to skyrocket.
"The first is just the regulatory burden," he said. "Colleges have to comply with regulations like everyone else. There's a lot more regulation than there used to be. That gets built into higher compliance staffs and bigger tuition costs. The second is the vast amount of federal money that's flowing into higher education. The bottom line and the research is we're feeding the tuition rise by giving it an open-ended federal subsidy. The third is that states really are strapped. Their budgets are being increasingly eaten up by Medicaid. They have to cut back on their support for higher education. They turn up the billing to the tuition price, and parents and students have been picking it up."