Higher Ed Now Has More Detractors Than Promoters

You know the confidence in higher ed data that everyone's been talking about? Well, here's a fresh analysis of it that might get your attention in a new way. In July, Gallup reported that American's confidence in higher ed was down sharply - dropping from 57% to 36% between 2015 and 2023. This measure combined "a great deal" and "quite a lot" as the 'confidence' percentage. It used a 4-point scale that also included "some" and "very little" on the other end. To be sure, the above drop represents a big slide in confidence.

But let me tell you what worries me even more. If you just look at the extremes of this scale and the changes between 2015-2023 on "a great deal" of confidence versus "very little," the story gets Friday-the-13th-scarier. "A great deal" dropped from 28% to 17% and "very little" rose from 9% to 22%. This means that in 2015 there were 3x more Americans (28 vs. 9) who had "a great deal" of confidence in higher ed than those who had "very little" confidence. If we were to translate this into a net promoter score (NPS) of sorts, you had three times more promoters than detractors. Today, there are now more "detractors" (22%) than promoters (17%) - which means NPS has gone negative. (Now, I certainly know that NPS is calculated using a 10-point scale - so this is not a perfect apples-to-apples comparison, but it is conceptually similar and directionally powerful.)

Why do businesses care so much about NPS? Because it's linked to pretty much every important metric of success. A world-class NPS score would be 50 - which means you have 5x more promoters than detractors. In 2015, higher ed had 3x more promoters than detractors and in just 8 years it now has more negativity about it than positivity. That is a massive change in less than a decade. And, yes it will continue to hurt enrollments, funding and more. This isn't the only thing driving enrollment declines (see any of my posts about demographic cliffs, sustained low rates of unemployment, etc.), but it sure is contributing to it.

And here's a related issue swirling around in the negativity about higher ed and that's the fact that we are turning out nearly as many drop-outs as we are graduates. There are now 40.4 million U.S. adults with some college but no degree. (This number grew by 1.4 million in the last year.) Economically speaking, there is virtually zero benefit to having 'some college but no degree.' All the benefit comes with the attainment of the degree. About 45% of U.S. adults between the ages of 25-64 have a college degree - which translates to roughly 77 million people. (We awarded about 2 million total degrees in the past year.)

This means that for every 2 people of working age WITH a college degree, there is 1 who has some college but no degree. This is NOT a healthy ratio. And at current run rates, we are getting closer to producing nearly as many people with some college no degree (1.4 million) as we are awarding degrees (2 million) annually. Oof.