Is College Worth It? Voters Are Split.

Welcome to Invisible Divides, a series exploring the profound differences in worldview between Democrats and Republicans. These beliefs about education, religion, gender, race and political extremism align with partisanship — but run much deeper. Differences like these don’t just influence the ways Democrats and Republicans vote, but also how they think about their place in America. And they help explain why opposing views on important issues today seem increasingly irreconcilable.

It’s not surprising that polls show voters divided on student loan forgiveness by party. In a Daily Kos/Civiqs Poll from August, right after Biden’s plan was announced, 88 percent of Republicans and 56 percent of independent voters disapproved, while 88 percent of Democrats approved. A Quinnipiac University poll, also from the end of August, found that 81 percent of Republicans disapproved while 88 percent of Democrats approved.

But Rachel Fishman, the acting director with the Education Policy program at New America, said there are partisan divides on whether the government should be funding colleges and universities at all. New America’s annual report measuring attitudes about higher education found this year that 77 percent of Democrats thought the government should be more responsible for funding higher education, while 63 percent of Republicans said students should be more responsible. 

“You can kind of piece together from there how the subsequent answers on questions about funding and value kind of fall into place from that notion,” Fishman said. 

In the New America survey, Republicans viewed attending college as something students themselves benefit from, but did not necessarily see colleges as something that benefited communities or the country as a whole. This could have implications for many battles to come, as Democrats want to increase federal funding for higher education and make at least some colleges free, while Republicans are more focused on scaling back student loan forgiveness and on curriculum battles.

Read the full article here