{"id":147674,"date":"2026-10-01T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=147674"},"modified":"2026-10-01T09:09:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T13:09:13","slug":"gallup-record-low-31-say-college-education-is-very-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=147674","title":{"rendered":"(Gallup) Record-Low 31% Say College Education Is &#8216;Very Important&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Three in 10 Americans (31%) think a college education is &#8220;very important,&#8221; four percentage points below <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/695003\/perceived-importance-college-hits-new-low.aspx\">last year\u2019s reading<\/a>, the previous low among the seven times Gallup has asked this question since 1978. As recently as 2013, more than twice as many U.S. adults (70%) said college was very important.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, the percentage of U.S. adults who say a college education is \u201cnot too important\u201d has risen from 6% in 2013 to 29% today, while the percentage saying it is \u201cfairly important\u201d has increased from 23% to 39%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the earliest years of Gallup&#8217;s trend on this question, those considering a college education to be very important increased sharply from 36% in 1978 to 64% by 1985. In the past decade, the perceived importance of college has plummeted, with those saying it is very important now slightly below its 1978 starting point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This year, Gallup&#8217;s Aug. 3-24 poll finds that the percentage of U.S. adults viewing college as \u201cnot too important\u201d nearly matches those rating it \u201cvery important.\u201d The 64-point gap between them in 2013 has shrunk to just two points today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/715133\/record-low-say-college-education-important.aspx\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p><blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">EDITORIAL | WHY WE\u2019RE LOSING TRUST IN HIGHER EDUCATION<br><br>The American public is losing trust in the institution of higher education. This trend has made headlines since 2015 \u2014 when Gallup first began tracking the issue \u2014 and the discourse seems to be revived with every follow-up\u2026 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/YvalzxZPcY\">pic.twitter.com\/YvalzxZPcY<\/a><\/p>&mdash; FXHedge (@Fxhedgers) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/Fxhedgers\/status\/2105642327733583906?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 1, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three in 10 Americans (31%) think a college education is &#8220;very important,&#8221; four percentage points below last year\u2019s reading, the previous low among the seven times Gallup has asked this question since 1978. As recently as 2013, more than twice<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=147674\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,209,111],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-147674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-americau-s-a","category-education"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=147674"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147680,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147674\/revisions\/147680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=147674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=147674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=147674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}