Americans are increasingly placing less importance on college, with the number viewing it as “very important” dropping to a new low, according to a new poll.
Only 35 percent rate a college education as “very important,” according to the results of a survey from Gallup released earlier in September. Forty percent said they think college is “fairly important” while 24 percent said it is “not too important.”
That number of Americans who view college as “very important” has dropped dramatically since 2010, when 75 percent said they thought it was. When Gallup last asked Americans to rate the importance of college in 2019, about half (53 percent) said it was very important.
The declining perception of the importance of college has been reflected in enrollment figures, with many choosing to forego higher education over concerns about tuition costs, student loan debt and what is taught at universities.
Curriculum Shift
The rise in artificial intelligence and advanced technology is another reason that Americans may be losing faith in college, Aria Razfar, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Education, told Newsweek.
Razfar said universities must meet the moment by shifting toward teaching uniquely human skills for roles that AI cannot replace.
“If universities don’t adapt from the agrarian models in which they were built, they will not survive,” he said.
“Quite simply, universities must shift their curriculum towards uniquely humanistic skills that require empathy, creativity, and physicality. Artificial intelligence will inevitably replace many jobs that used to require a college degree or certification. However, it won’t be able to easily replace jobs and social roles that require empathy, creativity, and physicality. There needs to be a conscious shift towards this type of curriculum across institutions of higher learning.”
The perceived importance of college is down across all demographics, including gender, age, and political affiliation, according to Gallup’s survey.
Among college graduates, the number who view college as very important has declined 32 percentage points since 2013, from 78 percent to 40 percent. Those who didn’t graduate also place less importance on university now than in 2013, with just 31 percent saying college is “very important” in 2025 compared to 67 percent in 2013.
But Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education, said that even as the perceived importance of university has declined significantly, the “evidence is clear that the actual importance of college remains high.”
He pointed to statistics showing how the gap between the earnings of college-educated workers and those with only high school diplomas has increased significantly since the 1960s.
“The average college graduate today earns 75 percent more than the average adult with only a high school degree,” Reardon said. “Moreover, the importance of college is much higher now than in the 1960s-1990s.”