How Public Confidence in Higher Education Varies by Social Context

ABSTRACT

Some research suggests a crisis of public confidence in universities and colleges in the United States. But approaches to theorizing confidence in higher education do not examine how confidence varies across social contexts, while empirical efforts to document confidence are characteristically limited by weak construct validity. Drawing on a nationally-representative survey of 10,241 Americans, we develop a conceptual framework that examines how political ideology, religion, parental career encouragement, and demographic factors correlate with confidence in higher education. Only fourteen percent of the US public reports “a great deal” of confidence in higher education. Evangelical Protestants, Catholics, Jews, individuals who perceive a conflict between science and religion (and are on the side of religion), and political conservatives are significantly less likely to report confidence in higher education, while parents who report the strongest encouragement of professional career paths for their children are significantly more likely to report confidence in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Institutional legitimacy
• politics
• public confidence
• religion

Funding

Data collection for this study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, Religious Understandings of Science Study (Grant #38817), Elaine Howard Ecklund PI.

Notes

¹ Taking into account stages of recruitment into the panel and the completion of a panel profile, the cumulative response rate for the RUS survey was 5.6% (Callegaro & DiSogra, 2008). Although this response rate may appear lower than that of other surveys, it is important to recognize that comparing response rates for a long-term panel and a one-time survey involves different dynamics and demands on individuals. Furthermore, there are significant advantages to surveys derived from online panels. In research comparing sample representativeness and response quality between a random-digit dial telephone survey and an online panel survey, Chang and Krosnick (2009) found that the latter provided the representativeness of the former while reducing measurement error, survey satisficing, and social desirability response bias. In short, online panels provide an ideal balance between representativeness and response quality.

² The specific benchmarks were for gender, race and Hispanic ethnicity, education, household income, region, household Internet access, and household primary language.

³ The traditions classified as non-Western are vastly different, yet small numbers precluded analysis of each separately.

Additional information

Funding

Data collection for this study was funded by the John Templeton Foundation, Religious Understandings of Science Study (Grant #38817), Elaine Howard Ecklund PI.