For many Americans, student debt has been one of the defining issues of Joe Biden’s presidency. This is in large part because of the considerable discussion prior to Biden’s student debt relief proposal about whether Biden would actually cancel student debt—and, if so, how much (and for whom) debt relief might be made available.
In the course of these discussions surrounding student debt cancellation, we have heard from many commentators, politicians, and other public figures. Very often, their comments center on core issues surrounding the funding of higher education, including who should be responsible for the cost of a college degree, given what a college degree promises (or does not promise) in today’s economy. Some commentators have advocated for widespread student loan forgiveness, arguing that the high cost of college is out-of-step with the economic realities many college graduates face. This may be true especially for students of color and those from low-income families, who often have higher debt balances and less favorable repayment terms than their more privileged counterparts.
Other commentators have made the case that student loans should not be forgiven because the burden of student debt should be placed on those who went to school. These commentators often also make the argument that college is not worth it these days—and, thus, students who took out loans to attend college ultimately made poor financial decisions that they now have to live with (“buyer beware”).
Despite much discourse about student debt among elites in the media, politics, education, and other realms, much less attention has been paid to public opinion about these issues. That is, irrespective of what elites have to say about student loan forgiveness, where does the public stand on core issues in the funding of higher education? Where does the public situate the locus of responsibility for the funding of college—or, more succinctly, who should pay?
As sociologists who have spent much of our careers studying public beliefs (including, for example, public opinion toward same-sex marriage and the rapid liberalization that took place in the US), we are familiar with the power of public opinion and its ability to create social change. Research by sociologists and other social scientists has been key in demonstrating that public opinion both shapes, and is shaped by, public policy. We have seen some deviations from this principle recently, such as with the US Supreme Court decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which was largely in conflict with public opinion—but we see this as an exception to the rule rather than the continuation of a broader pattern.
Public Opinion on the Funding of College: A Decade of Research
Given the centrality of higher education in the lives of many Americans, coupled with the importance of public opinion for shaping public policy, our research focuses on how members of the public think about issues surrounding the funding of college. Our recent book, Who Should Pay? Higher Education, Responsibility, and the Public (Russell Sage Foundation 2022) brings together more than a decade’s worth of interviews and surveys on these topics that we conducted along with our research team. In the book, we discuss many of the topics we covered in our interviews, such as: whether college is worth the cost it requires; whether college is accessible to low-income students, the middle class, and students of color; and whether public colleges and universities should be free for qualified students (a topic that has emerged in later years, but something that we could not have imagined asking respondents in 2010, when we first started conducting interviews).
The core question we ask our respondents is essentially: Who should pay for college? Should it be parents—who historically have been seen as the default source of college funding? Should it be students—arguably the primary beneficiaries of a college education? We describe both of these options as individualist funding solutions because they rely primarily on the financial resources of individuals. Or should the responsible party be government—a stakeholder that represents a more collectivist approach to the funding of college than we have taken in the US in recent years?
When we first started conducting interviews in 2010, the results were clear: Most Americans, or about two-thirds, preferred an individualist approach to the funding of college, in which students and parents were seen as most responsible. This did not surprise us. Historically, Americans have believed deeply in the principles of self-reliance and individual responsibility. Federal financial aid forms such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) also take parental financial support as a given, assuming that their financial resources will be used to be pay for some or all of their children’s college costs.
In fact, these results were nearly identical to what Brian and coauthor Lala Carr Steelman found in an article published in the American Journal of Sociology in 1991, which used federal data from the 1980s. At that time, as we saw in 2010, respondents overwhelmingly believed that parents or students should be responsible for the funding of college, with government trailing far behind. Because public opinion had stayed virtually the same between the 1980s and our survey in 2010, despite vast increases in the cost of college as well as cumulative student debt, we assumed that this individualistic orientation would persist into the foreseeable future.
Yet, this is not what happened. When we conducted interviews again in 2015, we found that Americans were far more supportive of government investment in higher education. In fact, our sample in 2015 was evenly split between those who preferred an individualist solution (in which students and/or parents pay) and those who preferred a collectivist solution (in which government pays by itself or in partnership with parents and/or students). When we conducted follow-up surveys online in 2019 and then again in 2020, after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, this is again what we found: Americans increasingly believed that government—not individuals—should be responsible for the funding of higher education.
Our interviews also included narrative questions that asked respondents to explain their beliefs about the funding of college. For those who expressed support for government investment in higher education, their narratives frequently evoked core concerns of the middle class and fending off economic precarity. They spoke about concerns surrounding rising student loan debt, which has only continued to accelerate in the time since we conducted our interviews. They spoke about higher education as a right rather than a privilege, and the reality that a bachelor’s degree is needed in order to achieve a middle-class lifestyle in today’s economy. They also spoke about broadening access to college for those from historically marginalized groups, and that government investment is needed in order to help such groups become upwardly mobile. These are themes that are broadly in line with calls for the cancellation of student loan debt, and broadly in contrast to those who wish to hold students financially accountable for their time in higher education.
At the same time, we also heard from many respondents who wanted government support to have strings attached, such as caps on the amount offered to each student. Such comments reminded us that although Americans may be much more collectively oriented than they once were, Americans’ taste for self-reliance also runs deep.
Looking Forward: Issues for the Future of Higher Education and Public Opinion
Over the past year, we have continued to collect data on public attitudes toward broad issues in higher education. One of those issues, perhaps unsurprisingly, is loan forgiveness. We see people’s attitudes toward loan forgiveness as intertwined with their attitudes toward financial responsibility for college because these issues both speak to who should bear the burden for a college education. Across our recent surveys, we have consistently found that a critical mass of people believe that some amount of loan forgiveness should be offered. We see this as consistent with Americans’ gradually greater receptiveness toward government investment in higher education.
Yet, we also find some amount of acknowledgement among Americans that student loan forgiveness is not enough, and that a more permanent solution is needed to cement real change. When we ask respondents to make a hypothetical choice between, on one hand, student loan forgiveness, and, on the other hand, making a commitment to college affordability, they overwhelmingly say that we should focus on making tuition free or at least more affordable. Thus, while Americans are supportive of measures that offer economic relief, perhaps they are even more supportive of efforts to ensure higher education is a fair deal.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the authors and not the American Sociological Association.
