American higher education finds itself under siege, facing unprecedented political attacks that threaten its fundamental mission and autonomy. What makes these assaults particularly devastating is not just their intensity, but the fertile ground of public sentiment that has enabled them to take root and flourish. The convergence of deep-seated anti-intellectual currents with a dramatic erosion of trust in universities has created the perfect conditions for opportunistic politicians to weaponize higher education as a cultural and political battleground.
Once seen as sites of personal and social betterment, universities and colleges nationwide now struggle with a profound crisis of confidence. This shift in perception is hardly anecdotal. Recent surveys reveal that but 36 percent in the U.S. feel positively about higher education, reflecting serious concerns over the institution’s efficacy and fairness.[i] 
Moreover, a growing partisan divide complicates the erosion of trust. While 59 percent of Democrats express confidence in higher education, a staggering 81 percent of Republican voters now view the institution unfavorably. This chasm speaks volumes about the politicization of education in America, with college increasingly seen as a battleground for antagonistic ideologies.[ii]
A pragmatic shift in educational preferences complements this rift. Mirroring student attitudes is the reality that most Americans now regard trade schools and vocational training as equivalent or superior to four-year institutions in delivering practical education. This pivot reflects changing educational values and an indictment of the entire enterprise of higher education. The growing appeal of alternative educational paths suggests a fundamental reevaluation of what constitutes valuable knowledge and skills in today’s rapidly changing job market. The roots of this mistrust are multifaceted, extending beyond mere economic calculations to encompass broader socio-political undercurrents. Often associated with privilege and intellectual elitism, higher education increasingly is viewed through a lens of class-based suspicion.
Because of this, college becomes an easy scapegoat for populist demagogues of the kind seen in recent politics. The perception of academia as disconnected from the realities of everyday Americans has fueled a growing resentment, particularly among those who feel economically or culturally left behind.
This scapegoating is nothing new. Since the tumultuous student activism of the 1960s, universities have played a major role in movements advocating for feminist, civil rights, and LGBTQ issues, often challenging cultural norms and government policies. While these activities exemplify the universities’ role in fostering critical thinking and social progress, they also render higher education a ready target for reactionary opportunists. The tension between academic freedom and public perception has become increasingly pronounced, with debates over campus speech and ideological diversity further complicating the relationship between higher education and the broader public.
These attitudinal declines worsened with the pandemic, which paralleled a steep drop in university enrollments. The rapid shift to online learning was a double whammy, exposing the limitations of digital learning while making colleges and universities look inept. Defensiveness within academia did little to address these systemic failures, despite efforts to blame government or tout a speedy return to business as usual. The result has been a realization by many schools that they need to change the way they think about students and do business overall. None of this sits very well with faculty, many of whom already feel frustrated with growing utilitarian pressures on their campuses. Nevertheless, overly idealistic beliefs in education for its own sake won’t be enough in today’s economy, where a bachelor’s degree no longer guarantees a middle-class life.
Keep in mind that beneath America’s dislike of universities is the country’s longstanding ambivalence toward education in general. Even as schooling enhances upward mobility, many in the U.S. are wary of too much book-learning. Some of this comes from the anti-elitism baked into the American psyche, which associates pedantic superiority with aristocratic ways rejected centuries ago. Also, lots of people simply don’t like being told what to think. They prefer to believe they are making up their own minds, even as they are falling for political pitches. Any Americans are especially prone to believing they know more than they do. When it comes managing household finances, most consumers don’t want any help –– usually seeing money as a “personal” matter. Perceived autonomy is one of consumerism’s unspoken allures. Buying things provides a form of gratification that’s just about the opposite of sitting at a school desk.
In his landmark 1964 book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, Richard Hofstadter linked these tendencies to worries about external control, along with latent insecurities about American prosperity. This partly explains why business leaders often react with such virulence to pedigreed “experts.” As Hofstadter put it, “The plain sense of the common man, especially if tested in some demanding line of practical work, is an altogether adequate substitute for, if not actually much superior to, formal knowledge and expertise acquired in schools.”[iii] America’s ambivalence about schooling is especially pronounced toward higher education. These anti-intellectual instincts have been fed in recent years by a torrent of bad publicity over admissions tuitions, rising costs, and a resurgent student protest movement. “The erosion of trust in heretofore respected institutions is a problem for the ivory tower,” wrote Daniel Drezner in his book The Ideas Industry.[iv] “Academics attempting to weigh in on public affairs confront a delegitimizing assault on the academy,” Dresner added , calling it “the War on College.”[v] Among other things, this has meant a collapse of public confidence in anyone speaking from higher education as a platform, and a replacement of the “public intellectual” with “thought leaders” like Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg.
The rise of the thought leader shows just how much Americans value practical knowledge and success stories. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, according to Drezner. In fact, it might help clarify what kinds of education work best in the U.S. Knowledge seems to catch on when it has a clear usefulness. “Our brain has evolved to discard information that it thinks has irrelevance,” the infamous Elon Musk recently quipped.[vi] Others see such attitudes reflecting a broader pattern of neoliberal rationalization in which practical utility becomes the measure of all things (especially when linked to money). Certainly, the thought leader concept reinforces this. On the other hand, the common appeal of practical ideas may have a less partisan explanation –– having more to do with immediate need and experience. Many consumer commodities are there for a purpose, after all. And customers don’t always have a choice about whether to buy basic necessities like food, clothing, and other staples of life.
This learning dynamic long has been recognized in educational circles, however. From the nineteenth century onward, successful teachers saw that students do best when they “learn-by-doing” and feel they have some control over the process. Memorized facts quickly get forgotten when lessons seem disconnected from practical usage. And rote learning also steals the fun of finding knowledge on one’s own. These factors informed the Progressive Education movement and its core principle of student-centered learning. When students discover their own answers and see how knowledge can help them, the insights become more meaningful and longer lasting. This fundamental insight about hands-on cognition isn’t only a premise of educational theory. For quite some time, employers have been seeing it in the workplace.
If you think about it, learning-by-doing has always been the basis of on-the-job training, internships, and trade apprenticeships. The learner initially is shown a method and then asked to perform the task independently. Even today, medical students are familiar with what is termed the “See One, Do One, Teach One” approach. In 1962, economist Kenneth J. Arrow wrote an often-cited paper entitled “The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing” in which he declared that “One empirical generalization is so clear that all schools of thought must accept it … Learning is the product of experience.”[vii] To Arrow, “Learning can only take place through the attempt to solve a problem and therefore only takes place during activity.” Going yet further, Arrow added that “A second generalization that can be gleaned from many of the classic learning experiments is that learning associated with repetition of essentially the same problem is subject to sharply diminishing returns.”[viii]
This emphasis on practical learning speaks to something deeper in the American psyche, but it also creates unexpected tensions for today’s college students. While they’re drawn to hands-on, experiential approaches that promise immediate utility, students find themselves caught in an impossible bind. They arrive on campuses seeking knowledge and credentials for economic advancement, only to discover they’re walking into cultural battlegrounds where their very presence feels contested. The ambient hostility toward higher education seeps into classrooms and social spaces, creating what many students describe as a persistent sense of unease.[ix] When anti-intellectual sentiment becomes mainstream political discourse, students internalize questions about whether their educational pursuits have value beyond personal advancement. This psychological burden hits First-Gen college students particularly hard. They’re simultaneously told that college is essential for success but that it’s also an indulgence disconnected from “real” work.[x] Social media amplifies these doubts, with viral videos mocking college graduates working in retail or ridiculing student debt loads, making academic achievement feel like a source of shame rather than pride.[xi] Faculty report that students increasingly arrive in classrooms already defensive about intellectual engagement, as if critical thinking itself has become politically suspect.
What emerges is a generation of students who want the benefits of higher education but feel apologetic about pursuing them. They navigate campuses where anti-intellectual attitudes have become so normalized that defending academic work feels naive or pretentious. When students graduate feeling they must justify their education rather than celebrate it, something essential has been lost. Perhaps most troubling is how this dynamic has become self-reinforcing: as students internalize doubts about intellectual work, they’re less likely to engage deeply with ideas, which makes their educational experience feel hollow, which reinforces criticisms that college is worthless.[xii] Breaking this cycle requires more than defending higher education’s economic value. It demands reclaiming intellectual curiosity as a fundamental human capacity worthy of cultivation and respect. Until that happens, students will continue bearing the psychological cost of a culture that simultaneously demands and denigrates the very education it claims to value.
[i] Meg Brenan, “Americans Confidence in Higher Education Down Sharply,” Gallup (July 11, 2023) https://news.gallup.com/poll/508352/americans-confidence-higher-education-down-sharply.aspx
[ii] Ibid
[iii]Richard Hofstadter, Anti-intellectualism in American Life, (New York: Vintage, 1996) p. 19.
[iv] Daniel W. Drezner, The Ideas Industry (Oxford: Oxford, 2017).
[v] “The War on College Continues.”
[vi] Matt McFarland, “Elon Musk Explains What is Wrong with Math Class,” CNN (Jul. 19, 2017) http://money.cnn.com/2017/07/19/technology/future/elon-musk-dc/index.html?iid=ob_homepage_tech_pool (accessed Jul 23, 2018).
[vii] Kenneth Arrow, “Learning by Doing,” Review of Economic Studies 29, no. 3 (Jun. 1962): 155.
[viii] Ibid.
[ix] Sarah Rose Cavanagh, The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion(Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2016).
[x] Jennifer M. Silva, Coming Up Short: Working-Class Adulthood in an Age of Uncertainty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[xi] Tressie McMillan Cottom, Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy (New York: The New Press, 2017).
[xii] William Deresiewicz, Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life(New York: Free Press, 2014).