Majority Of GOP Voters Believe Higher Edu Harms America

Only days before PBS banned his showed and deleted all mentions of it from their websites, Tavis Smiley invited Brandon Busteed, Executive Director of Gallup Education and Workforce Development on his program to discuss the political divide in America's growing idiocracy. Conservatives are fearful of the influence of college education and believe universities are diabolical . Studies by Pew & Gallup find a dramatic shift from Pew's 2015 survey, when 37% said it college was a negative influence and 54% had positive understanding of the role of higher education. In just two years, coinciding with the rise of evangelical favorite Donald Trump as a national political figure, the majority of Republicans' attitudes toward higher education went from positive to negative. Conservatives are suspicious of educational institutions, and dislike the political viewpoints of instructors or course materials are threatened by the social environment and oft disagree with scientific conclusions that challenge their faith. Republicans with low confidence in colleges tend to see the role of higher education through distinctly suspicious political blinders.

By contrast, people on the left or Democrats with a perception of low confidence in U.S. colleges more often cite issues dealing with practical and economic aspects of higher education -- saying tuition is prohibitively priced, or the collegs have deteriorating quality or are not well run.