President Donald Trump wants to revoke the tax-exempt status for Harvard University.
A few years ago, future Vice President JD Vance gave a speech entitled “The Universities Are the Enemy.”
You’d think that Republicans don’t have a lot of faith in the nation’s system of higher education. Nationally speaking, you’d be right. The Gallup polling group has documented how American confidence in higher education has fallen over the past decade, with much of that decline coming from a sharp drop among Republicans.
That’s why a recent survey about Virginians’ attitudes on higher education stands out: Not only do Virginians have more confidence in higher education than Americans as a whole, the main reason is because Virginia Republicans are much more supportive of higher ed — as in, more than twice as enthusiastic as their national counterparts.
That’s my main takeaway from the recent poll conducted for the Virginia Business Higher Education Council, a business group that sees higher education as key to the state’s prosperity. Its president is Kirk Cox, a former Republican Speaker of the House (and a former high school teacher). The council shared its poll in advance of a formal release and gave me a chance to talk with pollster Jim Hobart.
I’m always somewhat skeptical of polls conducted for any interest group on a specific topic because they’re never going to release something with unfavorable results. Not surprisingly, the results here are, indeed, very complimentary of higher education in Virginia. “It’s happy data,” Hobart says. “This cycle it might be some of the happiest data I get to present.” (His political clients are Republicans.)
There’s one question, though, where the answers really get my attention. That’s the very first question the poll asked: Please tell me how much confidence you, yourself, have in higher education in Virginia.
This question is modeled exactly after one that Gallup asked nationally a year ago, so we get a good comparison.
Nationally, respondents have been losing faith in higher education and last year were in a pretty sour mood. Here’s what Gallup found: a nine-year slide from 57% having “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education in 2015 to just 36% feeling that way last year.
At the same time, the number of those having “very little” confidence or “none” in higher ed has shot up from 10% to 32%, with the sharpest rise coming in just a year’s time.
By contrast, the Virginia poll found 43% have “a great deal” or “quite a lot,” certainly above that 36% figure nationally. Meanwhile, only 18% had “very little” confidence or “none,” well below the 32% nationally.
What accounts for the more positive feelings in Virginia? The pollster’s theory is that this is akin to findings from many national polls: People’s trust in Congress is low, but they usually like their own representative, which is why most of them get reelected. If you’re posing the question nationally, people may have more general thoughts, and those thoughts are trending downward. However, if you pose the question in a state context, people may think more specifically — to whatever their own alma mater is, or wherever their son or daughter might have gone.
If we dig deeper, though, we find the actual numbers. The reason that higher education in Virginia gets higher confidence ratings than nationally is because of Virginia Republicans. They don’t have quite as much confidence as Virginia Democrats do — 49% for Democrats vs. 42% for Republicans — but the gap isn’t that big. Most importantly, Virginia Republicans have much more confidence in higher ed than their national counterparts do. Nationally, only 20% of Republicans do.
Furthermore, 50% of Republicans nationally say they have “very little” confidence or “none” in higher ed. In Virginia, though, only 19% of Republicans feel that way (compared to 12% for Virginia Democrats).
Why are Virginia Republicans twice as confident about higher ed as Republicans nationally? Some of this may be an outgrowth of the question eliciting more specific thoughts in a statewide context — nationally, Republicans may be thinking of the political controversies at places such as Harvard and Columbia. In the context of Virginia, they may be thinking more specifically about, say, the engineering program at Virginia Tech or the nursing program at Radford University, programs that don’t have a political dimension.
Cox noted that Virginia has a long history of bipartisan support for higher education. Whenever he’s spoken to freshman legislators for their orientation, he’s always told them that if they are looking for an issue where they can work across the aisle, they should look to education, especially higher ed. “Whether tuition moderation, or internships, these are not Democratic or Republican issues,” he said.
That bipartisan support for higher education likely explains the favorable numbers that run through the poll results. My eye goes to the politics, but for Cox and others on the Virginia Business Higher Education Council, what matters more are the policy questions (although I’d note that you need political support to get those policies enacted).
In recent years, the council has been focused on improving the talent level of the Virginia workforce, which has led to a push for more internships — and state funding to make more internship programs happen. The poll found that 93% of those surveyed agreed that internships are important; only 7% disagreed.
I don’t doubt those numbers — I’m curious how 7% could disagree — but I’m also always skeptical of polls on behalf of issue groups that ask how people feel about a certain program. Sure, internships are important, but are they so important that we’re willing to spend tax dollars on them? Those are the kind of real-life tradeoffs that governors and legislators face when they’re putting together a budget — is state support for internships more important than, well, whatever else it is legislators have clamoring for their funding?
Nothing in the poll poses those kinds of questions, but Hobart notes the “intensity” of many responses — that given the choice between some aspect of higher ed being “very important,” “somewhat important, “not very important” or “not important at all,” an unusually high number went with the “very important” option. That’s not often found in many poll responses, where people approve of something but try not to appear too enthusiastic.
With any poll, I look for numbers that have changed, assuming there are some prior figures available for comparison. With a candidate, is that candidate rising or falling?
The business council conducts this poll on a pretty regular basis, and while not every question is the same every year, enough are that we can discern some trends. One is that support for higher education in Virginia has been pretty steady over the years — except in some areas it’s rising.
- One of the biggest changes came in support for internships. In 2021, 78% said those were important. Now 91% do.
- Another shift came on the question of whether a college education is still a good value today. Given the growing emphasis on the importance of career and technical education, I would have expected those numbers to decline. They did just the opposite, with the “yes” answer rising from 72% in 2017 to 80% now.
- The prospect of forgiving student loans “if the student remains employed in Virginia for five years after graduation in their chosen field of study or another field that is experiencing a shortage of qualified workers” also saw rising support. In 2021, 75% liked that idea. This time, 83% did.
- Another rising idea: state funding for some internships, to help students with housing and transportation costs. In 2023, 66% approved of that; this time, 74% did.
The only category where support declined was the question about whether the state should increase funding for the Tuition Assistance Grants for students who attend a private college in Virginia. In 2021, 73% said yes. This time, only 60% did.
So what’s the point of this poll? It’s to influence the next governor and the General Assembly. Cox says he’s already briefed the two candidates for governor — Democratic Abigail Spanberger and Republican Winsome Earle-Sears — and will eventually brief legislators. The poll, he said, gives the council a way to make the case that voters care about higher education and value things such as internships. “We push affordability hard,” he said, meaning it’s important for the state to keep tuition as low as it can. “We want to keep our students in state,” Cox said, because then they’re more likely to stay in state after graduation.
Candidates this fall will see lots of polls. Some will be more favorable than others, but it will be hard for even the most popular front-runners to find numbers as favorable as the ones in this poll. Then the question becomes: How much are they willing to pay for these programs if they’re elected?
What we know about early voting so far
We’ve now had a week of early voting. See who’s running and where they stand on our Voter Guide. I take a look at some of the early trends in this week’s edition of West of the Capital, our weekly political newsletter. You can sign up for that or any of our other free newsletters here: