William Galston:

Higher education in the U.S. faces a crisis: Its credibility is under attack. The public is increasingly skeptical of university-trained experts and the test-score-based meritocracy that dominates America’s upper middle class.

In a mass democracy, the public accepts elite privilege only when it benefits average citizens. But the 21st century has brought a litany of elite failures: inaccurate intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, regulatory failures that permitted the Great Recession, mismanagement of the pandemic leading to unnecessary deaths and devastating losses for small businesses and students, and the worst inflation since the early 1980s. It’s no wonder much of the public rejects elitism. In retrospect, the populist revolt was inevitable.

Education level has become the great divider in contemporary American politics, eclipsing race and sex. Those with four-year college degrees tend to vote differently than those without.

This new politics of education-based division has transformed the political parties. In the 1960 presidential election, Democrats dominated the non-college-educated vote, while Republicans prevailed among voters with college degrees. The reverse was true in the 2024 election. Working-class voters, including Hispanics and blacks, have been shifting toward the GOP.

Alongside these shifts in voting patterns, American attitudes toward higher education have also changed. In 2015, majorities of Democrats and Republicans had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in colleges and universities. While confidence has since declined modestly among Democrats, it has collapsed among Republicans. A decade ago, 56% of Republicans expressed high confidence in higher education, and only 11% expressed little or no confidence. Today, a mere 20% have high confidence and 50% have little or no confidence.