Poll: Americans Have Lost Faith in University Leaders

A majority say in a new poll that higher education leaders are failing students, not developing them.

Nearly 80% of Americans surveyed in a new U.S. News-Harris Poll survey say that higher education institutions are more worried about their endowment than creating leaders of tomorrow.(GETTY STOCK IMAGES)

Americans are experiencing a crisis of faith in college and university leaders amid a volatile moment for the higher education sector, with more than half not trusting them to do the right thing for students.

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Nearly 80% of Americans surveyed in a new U.S. News-Harris Poll survey say that higher education institutions are more worried about their endowment than creating leaders of tomorrow, and more than 60% believe they are prioritizing donors, press and other external factors over students.

The biggest problem, nearly 80% of them say, is that if colleges and universities don’t become more accessible to all people and emphasize diversity, then the leaders of tomorrow will all be the same.

The survey was conducted online from Dec. 8 to Dec. 10 among a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 U.S. adults.

Roughly 60% reported that higher education leaders are failing students rather than developing them, and that one of the barriers is that they themselves aren’t good examples of leaders.




“To students, donors, alumni and the like, the one thing they can agree on here is that equivocation is not leadership,” says John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll.

The survey findings come as leaders of some of the most elite schools in the country, including Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, are contending with massive outcry over their handling of antisemitic remarks and protests in response to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

The U.S.-designated terrorist organization Hamas launched a surprise attack on Israel in October, slaughtering more than 1,400 Israelis – mostly civilians – in the most brutal attack on the country to date. In response, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has presided over a brutal bombing campaign in the Gaza strip that has killed as many as 17,000 Palestinians, the majority of whom are not affiliated with Hamas.


The conflict has prompted outrage on college campuses, with a sharp increase in reports of antisemitism and handful of cases of Jewish students being attacked at the same time that others are seeking to use the moment to highlight the plight of the Palestinian civilians caught in a humanitarian crisis. The division, and the handling of it by college and university presidents, underscores a confusion about the campus role in protecting free speech and the limits of free speech – one that seems reflected in the new survey.

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Indeed, while two-thirds of Americans say they believe campuses should uphold free speech even if some deem the language deplorable and 57% think that the entire issue is overblown since Palestinians are being harmed in the conflict as well, 63% believe that they aren’t handling antisemitism on campus effectively and 60% believe that colleges and university presidents should be dismissed from their jobs.

The president of the University of Pennsylvania Liz Magill resigned over the weekend as pressure mounted over her responses to a congressional committee she testified before last week. Harvard President Claudine Gay is facing similar blowback and the school’s governing board met on Monday to discuss the decision. But Harvard President Claudine Gay will remain in her position, the school’s governing board announced this morning.

Despite the chaos in the higher education sector, nearly 9 in 10 college graduates who are Gen Z or millennials say without their higher education experience, they wouldn’t be the leaders they are today and that their higher education experience taught them to be the leader they want to see instead of waiting for one. That’s compared to 68% of college graduates from Gen X or Boomers.

Source: https://www.usnews.com/news/leaders...ericans-have-lost-faith-in-university-leaders