When people are asked to name the issues that concern them most, they typically mention either major national issues, such as the economy, unemployment, or health care, or more dramatic, emotionally charged problems like AIDS, crime, or terrorism. For most people, higher education is an issue of somewhat lesser national importance. In their personal lives, however, the question of how to provide a college education for their children takes on a larger significance. In our survey of 832 California residents, and in a series of eight focus groups conducted in different parts of the state, we found high levels of concern about higher education and its role in California's future.
Public Anxiety
It is tempting to think that concerns about higher education are merely an extension of the public's general displeasure with public education. This study suggests, however, that Californians' concerns about higher education are radically different from the usual complaints expressed about elementary and secondary (K-12) education.
What most concerns people about K-12 schooling is its quality. In many of the focus groups conducted for this study, we began by asking people to say the first thing that came to mind when they thought of primary and secondary schools. Invariably, the first associations were lack of discipline, teachers who don't teach, students who won't learn, and an environment plagued by crime and drugs.
Californians' concerns about higher education are quite different. What people typically mention first is not the quality of public higher education, but its cost and inaccessibility. As one woman in Bakersfield said, "I don't know how I am going to be able to afford to send my daughter. I will have to work two or three jobs. She already works and goes to high school now, and it's hard on her. I don't know how we will manage." Compared to the way they feel about primary and secondary education, Californians seem to be relatively sanguine about the quality of higher education.
The source of public anxiety is a collision between two deeply held concerns. On the one hand, people feel that a college education is increasingly important for young people. The vast majority of Californians believe that for a young person today, a college education is the gateway to a middle-class life. At the same time Californians see opportunity for higher education slipping out of their grasp. Their fear is that the costs of sending a young person to college will soon be so high that only the well-off will be able to afford it.
This fear is further heightened by a sense of loss. In the past, Californians could take comfort from the fact that one of the world's finest higher education systems was virtually free to any California resident. Today, California's youthful and diverse population seems to sense that a door that used to be wide open is being slowly closed to them.
Not surprisingly, people are deeply concerned about the problem as they see it develop. While they don't know exactly what to do about it, they feel that the situation cannot be allowed to continue. A substantial majority of Californians, as we shall see, believe that the state's public higher education system needs to be fundamentally overhauled to keep higher education available to any qualified and motivated student.
As it turns out, one useful way to understand attitudes toward higher education is to compare them to the way people feel about health care, rather than comparing them to attitudes about elementary and secondary education. Although concerns about higher education may be less intense than concerns about health care, the dynamics of the two issues are similar. In both cases, we find that Californians feel at least some satisfaction with the quality of the institutions (much higher in the case of health care), but grave concerns about access. What concerns people about health care is that rising costs may push health care out of reach for themselves and their families. Although people don't know what they want done about the situation, they call for basic (but as yet nonspecific) changes in the health care system. In the minds of many Californians, higher education raises the same problem-a critically important good is perceived as spiralling out of reach, and they want the problem addressed.
In the first two sections of this report, we explore both sides of this equation-Californians' increasing conviction that higher education is an essential need in contemporary society and their escalating concern about access. In sections three and four, we describe reactions to various proposals for change and the deep-seated values underlying people's views. In Appendix One, we compare Californians' attitudes and concerns about higher education with those of other Americans. And in Appendix Two, we describe our research methodology.