2. Motivation. People also put great stress on the importance of individual motivation. If a student in primary or secondary school has a bad experience, many people tend to blame the school, parents, or administrators. By contrast, people tend to place the primary responsibility for success in college on the individual student. Seventy percent of Californians believe that the benefit a student gets from college depends mostly on the effort he or she puts into it. Only 18 percent attribute the benefit to the quality of the college.
3. Reciprocity. People believe that students should demonstrate that they are deserving of higher education, and, in some senses, earn the right to attend college. Opinion analyst Daniel Yankelovich, for example, has observed a shift in public conceptions of "deserving" and changing attitudes about rights and responsibilities: Americans are moving away from the notion of entitlements, toward a concept of rights based on reciprocity-giving something back to society in exchange for what we receive. This attitude is important in Californians' thinking about higher education as well. Sixty-eight percent of Californians believe that "students don't appreciate the value of a college education when they have no personal responsibility for paying for what it costs." As one San Diego woman said, "A giveaway is a throwaway. Someone coming out of high school should learn something about life in terms of investing in their own future."
These primary values underlie people's reactions to various proposed solutions to the problems of increasing costs and decreasing opportunity.
Restructuring Higher Education
This study presented Californians with a series of solutions that colleges and universities could use to respond to the problem of higher costs and diminishing resources- each accompanied by a possible tradeoff. While none of the suggested ideas is popular, Californians offer varying degrees of resistance depending on the extent to which the solution matches or violates these core values.
Least popular of all of the solutions covered by the study is the suggestion that universities decrease enrollments. Fifty-eight percent of Californians rate this as a poor idea. Californians are almost as hostile to the idea of raising expenses and fees, with 52 percent labeling this as a poor idea. Admitting fewer students and raising fees are unacceptable because these ideas violate the primary value of opportunity. As we have seen, Californians believe that either of these steps will restrict opportunity for many motivated and qualified students.
There is much less resistance to other proposals that do not directly limit access to higher education, such as limiting research (38 percent label this as a poor idea), cutting back on the upkeep of buildings (36 percent call this a poor idea), or asking professors to teach more students (only 34 percent thought this was a poor idea).
What Californians seem to be saying is that they are least receptive to proposals that reduce or limit access to higher education. Such changes cut sharply against the basic values. But Californians do indicate a willingness to think about changes in the way education is delivered. Here again the basic values come into play. Many people feel that a highly motivated student can still get a good education, even if classes are larger, or buildings are less well kept up.
Even though there is support for research, people are evenly divided on whether a lot of research can be cut, with 45 percent opposing cuts in research and 43 percent supporting them. Generally, Californians support research in concept (in focus groups, people tended to emphasize the value of medical research), but this support is weakened by news coverage of seemingly laughable projects such as studies on insect breeding (spending scarce research dollars to study "how a fly gets horny" seemed to evoke particular contempt).
Californians may think that state government has caused the higher education crisis, but their demand for a fundamental overhaul of the system is not restricted to state government. Many are quite willing to consider changes in colleges and universities as well. Many people seem to believe that the basic values of opportunity and motivation can still be supported by a system that delivers education in a more efficient and cost-effective way. Sixty-three percent, for example, agree that colleges "could save money by using new ways of teaching that rely on technological innovations, for example with greater use of computers and tele-conferences so that one professor could teach more students."
Paying for Higher Education
These core values also come into play when people explore different ways to help students pay for higher education. The study presented four different options as a way to explore Californians' values: more opportunities to work for financial aid, more loans, more direct aid to colleges, and more grants.
Significantly, the most popular idea, supported by 82 percent of Californians, is to give students opportunities to work for their own financial aid. This approach appeals to all three primary values: It provides opportunity for education, especially to those who are motivated enough to be willing to work for it. It involves reciprocity and personal responsibility since working one's way through college requires students to put in a kind of "sweat equity" for their education. Several focus group respondents commented favorably on President Clinton's ideas about national service programs, and national surveys show that this idea is very popular with the public.
Loans are a more complex matter in the mind of many Californians. On the one hand, loans are reasonably popular since they do provide an element of reciprocity: students are, in effect, paying for their own education. Fifty-nine percent think that the state should use loans more often than it does now as a way of helping students to pay for college education. Loans are problematic in other ways. There is a widespread and very troubling perception that many students are defaulting on college loans. In the public's mind, defaults have turned education loans from a reciprocity-based program into one more example of people robbing the public till. At the same time, there is also concern about the debt that students can accumulate in paying for higher education costs.
Direct aid to colleges and universities is supported by most Californians (55 percent think this method should be used more often). However, this idea is also somewhat controversial. On the one hand, most Cali-fornians see cutbacks in state aid as a major cause of escalating college costs. On the other hand, many focus group respondents were worried that if the state gives more money to education, the extra funds will just end up in the pockets of administrators.
Finally, Californians have mixed feelings about the idea of giving money directly to students. This approach does get some support; 42 percent say it should be used more often, as opposed to 29 percent who want to use it less often. The weaker support for this method may be due to the perception that direct grants are a giveaway, and they thus violate the principle of reciprocity.
Mixed feelings about loans and grants also emerge when people are asked to make choices among different approaches. For example, respondents were asked to choose between giving more loans and grants to qualified students (even if it meant cutbacks in other services and programs), versus asking students themselves to pay for college by making sacrifices such as living at home, working and going to school part-time (even if it meant some students would drop out). Grants and loans were favored by 50 percent of Californians, but a substantial minority (40 percent), would rather see students themselves make sacrifices such as working, living with their parents, or going to school part-time.
Respondents were also asked to choose between giving money directly to colleges versus giving it to students to spend on the public or private college of their choice. Here, Californians are almost evenly divided. A plurality (47 percent to 42 percent) favor giving money directly to colleges rather than giving it to students to spend on the public or private school of their choice.
What Californians are struggling for, in other words, are ways to help students pay for their own educations. People do not want to see students locked out of higher education, but they resist giving support to students with no strings attached.