What Americans think about government funding and aid for public colleges and universities

Survey Conducted by SSRS

The APM Research Lab, in collaboration with APM Reports’ Educate team and The Hechinger Report, conducted a survey to see what Americans believe about government funding and aid for public colleges and universities. The nationally representative survey of 1,003 American adults (18+) was conducted between November 27-December 2, 2018.
Survey respondents were asked two questions:

• Over the last 10 years, do you think that government funding for public colleges and universities has generally increased, decreased, or stayed the same?
• Over the past 10 years, do you think that publicly-funded grants and loans for students attending colleges and universities has generally kept up with the price of tuition?

The findings reveal that Americans, broadly speaking, do not fully appreciate changes that have occurred in the higher education funding and aid landscape during the past decade. Furthermore, there are salient differences in Americans’ beliefs about the public dollars fueling higher education—and who has access to it—based upon age, race, income, political affiliation, and other characteristics.