Gallup: Americans’ Confidence In Higher Education Falls To 38% As AI Doubts Grow

Americans' confidence in higher education slipped to 38% this year, down from 42% in 2025, according to the new Lumina Foundation-Gallup Confidence in Higher Education survey. The drop erases most of the modest recovery colleges saw last year.

The survey, conducted in June 2026, found that 38% of U.S. adults have "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in higher education, 37% have "some," and 25% have "very little" or none. When Gallup first asked the question in 2015, 57% of Americans expressed strong confidence.