Poll: Nearly half of parents don’t want their kids to go to a four-year college – The Hechinger Report
Anti-college sentiment greater among Republican, white and rural parents
Fewer American parents are dreaming of sending their kids off to a four-year college immediately after they graduate from high school, signaling both a deepening political divide over the value of higher education and a shift in public sentiment toward career training.
A Gallup survey, commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic foundation, and released April 7, 2021, found that 46 percent of parents said they would prefer not to send their children to a four-year college after high school, even if there were no obstacles, financial or otherwise. Only a slim majority of parents — 54 percent — still prefer a four-year college for their children. (The Carnegie Corporation is among the funders of The Hechinger Report.)
“We do see in the United States that parents are becoming slightly less likely to say a college degree is very important,” said Gallup’s Zach Hrynowski, an education research consultant who wrote the report.
Previous polls of U.S. adults have also detected waning support for higher education, despite politicians’ and college advocates’ urging that a four-year degree is one of the best paths to a middle-class life in a fast-changing, high-tech economy.