THOMAS LINDSAY: The College-For-All Fallacy

In 2025, the proof is glaring. Public confidence in colleges has crashed to 36%, down from 57% in 2015. The college-for-all dream, though well-intentioned, has inflated costs, buried millions in debt, and watered down education. Built on sand, its reputation is collapsing before us.

But you wouldn’t know any of this from many media accounts, according to which, as in this breathless headline, “Trump’s Demands of Harvard Escalate His War on Higher Ed.” (RELATED: HART: Elite Colleges Slowly Commit Suicide)

His war on higher ed? Not quite.

In fact, when it comes to higher-education reform, President Donald Trump is as much mirror as mover. Over the past two decades, it has been not simply a single president but the American people who have grown increasingly dissatisfied with higher education. And for good reason.

For some time, college was considered America’s golden key. In 2013, Gallup reported that 70% of Americans saw college as essential, up from 36% in 1978. College graduates earned $53,600, versus $33,600 for high school graduates, and degree holders extolled college as a smart bet.

However, since the ‘80s, tuition has doubled, outpacing inflation, and by 2015, the system was creaking. Student debt hit $1.2 trillion, topping credit card debt. Gallup’s 2015 poll found that 57% still trusted colleges, but by 2018, confidence had fallen to 48%. Republicans dropped from 56% to 39% in support; Democrats fell from 68% to 62%.

By 2019, faith was fading. Gallup reported only 41% of young adults saw degrees as “very important,” down 33 points from 2013. Pew Research noted a 12-point rise in negative views, with 59% of Republicans calling colleges harmful. Tuition rose 276% from 1980 to 2020, averaging $29,033 yearly. Debt reached $1.7 trillion, with 43.6 million borrowers owing $38,000 each. Only 54% of students graduated within six years, leaving dropouts with loans to repay but no degrees to obtain the jobs with which to repay them.

And the 2020s are crushing the dream. Gallup’s 2023 poll reported 36% confidence, with Republicans at 19% (down from 56%) and Democrats at 56% (down from 68%). A Wall Street poll found 56% of Americans now believe degrees aren’t worth the cost, up from 40% a decade ago. Pew’s 2024 poll reported that 50% of respondents believe that degrees aren’t needed for good jobs. Both feeding off and fostering higher education’s descent, non-degree earners made $45,000 in 2023, rivaling associate degrees, and vocational enrollment surged 16% (2020–2023).

Adding academic insult to financial injury, too many universities have abandoned the quest for wisdom, focusing instead on political activism. This decline into partisanship has served, unsurprisingly, only to heighten political polarization. The Chronicle of Higher Education (2023) found that Americans no longer see degrees as societal gains, preferring community colleges (49% confidence versus 33% for four-year schools). NPR’s 2025 poll revealed that even non-degree holders favor practical programs like two-year (associate’s) degrees.

The college-for-all myth has come at a steep price: spiked demand, ballooning tuition, and student debt—all while academic standards (and with them, student learning) sank. Today’s college students study 12–15 hours weekly, half the 1960s’ 24 hours a week, yet nearly 50% of college grades nationwide are A’s, whereas, in the early ‘60s, only 15% of all college grades were A’s. This is not because today’s students are brighter than Grandma. Rather, the opposite might be true: The landmark national study of student learning, Academically Adrift (2011) found that 36% of students nationwide, after four years invested in college, came away with little to no statistically significant increases in “general collegiate skills” —critical thinking, complex reasoning, and clear writing. These findings have been echoed by the 2020 NSSE data reporting that only 40% of seniors gained reasoning skills.

What does this brief history of the last two decades of American higher education tell us?

Rather than being the result of a president throwing his weight around, the college-for-all myth has collapsed under its own weight, driving up tuition, burying students in debt, and eroding academic rigor, while failing to deliver promised opportunity.

Higher education’s chief critic is not the Commander-in-Chief, but rather the majority of Americans whose views he voices. With only 36% of Americans expressing confidence in higher education, colleges must look inside and then reform themselves, or risk further irrelevance.

And they must do so now, before they shatter the aspirations of yet another generation.

This article was originally published by RealClearEducation and made available via RealClearWire.

Thomas Lindsay, Ph.D., is the Higher Education Policy Director for Next Generation Texas.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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