 Hi, good afternoon everyone. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Rachel Fishman and I am the Deputy Director for Higher Education Research at New America. And today along with my co-author Sophie Newn, we're going to share some of the data about varying degrees, which is our annual survey on higher education that looks at Americans' perceptions of the value of educational opportunities after high school, how those opportunities are funded, and how we hold institutions accountable for this investment. So we now have five years of data, and I want you to sit with us for a moment in what the past five years have looked like in this country. We've been through two tumultuous presidential elections and an insurrection on Capitol Hill. We have experienced a global pandemic that is still ongoing and has been devastating. We have seen economic recovery after the Great Recession. We've seen a pandemic-induced recession, and then we've seen recovery again, though just like the Great Recession, this recovery has been incredibly inequitable. We've seen midterm elections, a culture war on campus, and a racial reckoning. Now this is the year anniversary of George Floyd's murder, this racial reckoning that has been long overdue. I think about how much my own life has changed over the past five years. For me personally, it's been having two children and all the wonder that they bring by my first house paying down and almost off my student loan debt. And professionally, I've seen people come and go at New America because I've been here for over five years now, but I've certainly been here for every iteration of varying degrees. And I'm so happy that we're welcoming some of them back today to discuss this data and how it's changed and how it hasn't over the past five years. Through all of this, we at New America work on and adapt varying degrees every year. And we're just sort of in awe of how steadfast people really believe in the value of education, despite all that has changed over the past five years in this country and for people personally. So before I begin, I really want to thank two of our other co-workers this year, Elyn Johnson and Peter Romo-Panzales. And I also want to thank the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for making this work possible. And please feel free to tweet at a hashtag varying degrees and visit varyingdegrees.org to see all of the data, more of the findings. You can play around with the data tool. You can download the data files. It's a veritable treasure trove of public opinion data. So let's get started. The next slide, we will see that there is a simmering pessimism about whether colleges and universities are leading the country in a positive or negative direction. So as I mentioned before, not a lot has changed over the past few years, but we are starting to see some change. Now, this was a question that was new last year. And it is adapted from a Pew Research Center survey that asked the exact same question and found that over the years, it has asked it for many, many years. But over the years, it has found that Americans, the view that Americans think that colleges and universities have a positive effect has really notably declined. So the last time they collected this data was in 2019 and it was that 50% believed that colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the way things are going in this country. And notably in their data, they saw a lot of quite a majority of Republicans saying that they believe that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the way things are going in this country. So we decided to ask the same question on our survey, which is predominantly about higher education, whereas the Pew survey was about institutions in America in general. So it wasn't just about colleges and universities. It was also about unions and churches and Congress, all those various institutions nationwide. We got wildly different results in 2020. We found 69% believe that colleges and universities were having a positive effect. I want to note that in 2020, we collected this data right before the pandemic hit. So we collected it in February. One year later, we've seen a decline of 11 percentage points, which is significant, along with declines among party lines, notably among Republicans as you're looking at the data here. And so I don't know if that's just because of the particularities of this year and COVID-19 and just pessimism in this country in general, or if we're going to continue to see a decline next year. It's certainly something to watch. But on the next slide, as you'll see, something that has remained constant over the years is that people believe that education after high school continues to offer a good return on investment. We've been asking this question since 2017. And since 2018, we've been collecting party ID data. And as you can see, both Democrats, Republicans agree that higher education offers a return, a good return on investment for the student. On the next slide, you'll see that this year, we've asked a few questions about online education, especially because we had such a dramatic pivot online for most college students this year. Not pictured here, but over half 61% of Americans believe that the quality of online learning is worse than in-person instruction. And then as you can see here, four in five believe that online programs, ones that were traditionally always online even before the pandemic, should cost less than those that are offered in-person. On the next slide, you'll see that Americans remain divided on the availability of a high quality and affordable education after high school. It's split almost 50-50. This is where we'll see a notable partisan divide where Democrats strongly to somewhat disagree with this statement and Republicans strongly to somewhat agree with this statement. And then on the next slide, I think what's important context for this disagreement between Democrats and Republicans is that both Democrats and Republicans still believe that federal and state governments must spend more to make higher ed more affordable. Of course, you're gonna see much higher rates for Democrats where they say 93% for both federal and state governments spending more. But importantly to remember, both Republicans believe that both states and the federal government should spend money to make higher ed more affordable for students. And so I'm gonna turn it over to Sophie to discuss a little bit more of our findings. Thank you so much, Rachel. Hello, everyone, for those that don't know me. My name is Sophie Nguyen. I'm the policy analyst for the high education team at New America, and I have been very fortunate to be able to walk alongside with Rachel and all the team members in the high ed team on varying degrees for the past years. So to continue showing you some of the highlights of this year's survey, in the next slide, please. So our size of values and funding's accountability is also one area that varying degrees focus on. In this year's surveys, most American think that colleges and universities should provide publicly data that indicate quality, such as graduation rate and employment rate. 93% of American think that this is very or somewhat important, and this number has been largely unchanged since 2019, which is also the first year we asked these questions. In the next figure, you see that a majority of Americans support the idea that colleges and universities should lose some access to taxpayer dollars if they fail to miss certain indicator of quality, such as low graduation rates, low rate of graduate earning a living wage, or high default rate on student loan repayment. In the next slide. So given that the Biden administrations now has a lot of proposal for education after high school, in this year's survey, as American, what they think should be the most important for the president and also Congress to implement. So as you can see in this graph, more than half of Americans want to prioritize policy that focus on making education after high school more affordable, such that 23% of Americans want to prioritize tuition-free community college, 18% want to prioritize making public four year colleges and universities tuition-free. Another 40% of Americans want to prioritize policies that work to alleviate the burden of repaying student debt for borrowers. 19% of Americans want to prioritize to make income-driven repayment plans more accessible to borrower, and 13% of Americans want to prioritize forgiveness of $10,000 on student loan debt. In the next slide. So I would say one of the hotly debated conversations of last summer among colleges and university was whether to open the campus in the fourth semester of 2020 and bring students back. And in this year's surveys, we asked what Americans think about it, and 57% of Americans think that this is the right decisions. But I would want to caution that this is the questions that we also see a lot of differences among different demographic groups, especially among Democrat and Republicans. Not picture here, but 39% of Democrats agree with this decision compared to 84% of Republicans. In the next slide. So another change that colleges and university adapt in the last academic year was to waive the requirement for standardized tests such as SAT and ACT. 67% actually of Americans agree with these decisions among these people, more than half of them still want some versions of these decisions to continue after the pandemic. In that 35% wants to make ACT and SAT optional moving forward. And 16% suggest that we should drop standardized tests completely, having said that 41% still want SAT and ACT to be required, but only use in combinations with other requirements such as GBA or extracurricular activities. So I think that's it for the presentations of our findings today, but we really hope that you will go to varying degrees or oral to read our report this year and explore our data more in depth. So I'm gonna now kick it back to Rachel to introduce our panel today. Thanks Sophie. So I will note that you can ask any questions about the data and we will of course try to answer them. We're gonna open up for question and answer at the end, but we wanna go right into our discussion today. So joining myself in Sophie will be Alejandra Costa, who's a policy analyst at New America. Ernest is Wego, who is a policy analyst at the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association and Ashley Clark. And we're gonna be moderated by Tamara Heiler, who is the director of education at Third Way. So I am gonna turn it over to Tamara to get us going. Hi, thanks so much everyone for having me here today. I feel very honored that I get to be part of this sort of family reunion of New America and get to moderate sort of, what I've been able to witness working in the public opinion space from Third Way's perspective, have obviously been following very varying degrees over the last five years and have been lucky enough to work with all of you as sort of a brain trust as we continue to get this really important data and be able to see how some of these perceptions and trends have changed and in many ways not changed over time. Before I jump into questions though, I'm gonna do something a little silly here, but I did do a little bit of Googling in honor of your five year anniversary as varying degrees. And according to the internet, I found out that the traditional gift for a five year anniversary is wood and the modern gift is silverware. And since I know how much work and effort that you all put into putting this survey together every single year, I've made you all a commemorative wooden spoon that at some point when I see you guys in real life again, I will give it to you. My husband was very confused when I was like, don't worry, I'm just gonna write on a Sharpie on one of our spoons. But this will stay here forever for you guys to commemorate, this is a big deal. So congratulations on all of the hard work. So with that, let's go ahead and jump right in. I know that you guys were giving us some of the most important findings, but there is a lot to unpack here. And also just to get better perspectives of everything that goes into putting this survey together every year. So as Rachel said, just as a friendly reminder, we will have about 15 minutes for Q&A at the end. And so just continue putting those in and I'll make sure to monitor those and leave plenty of time at the end for the questions that you all have. So for the first question, I'm gonna actually just have this be open to everyone on the panel, but actually Alejandra, I'd love to start with you. But over the years, I know you've all worked on this survey in varying forms. And so I'd love to know what findings have you found to be the most surprising or noteworthy and why? And in particular, is there anything from this year's survey that you found maybe confounding or extra surprising given everything that we've gone through in 2021? So Alejandra, why don't you kick things off for us? Cool, thank you. I think for me, I don't know if this is surprising. It's definitely pleasantly surprising to me, but I've loved to see or I love that Americans' views of accountability and holding institutions accountable hasn't really changed over the past five years. And I think that that's really interesting because it's such a complex issue, but nonetheless, Americans really care about this. So as we've seen, and Sophia and Rachel said earlier, this opinion hasn't really changed over the past five years. When I was an author a couple of years ago, I wrote an op-ed with our former colleague Claire McCann on how even across political parties, there was a pretty strong desire to see institutions held accountable. So I think to me, it's really cool to see that this hasn't really changed and that across demographics, across political parties, across over time, this is still a really strong sentiment. And I think that this is really important because accountability to me really is an equity issue. We see that low-income students, students of color, first-gen students are often the ones who get the short end of the stick in higher ed. And so to me, holding institutions accountable, of course with nuance, of course with understanding of the different missions, the different challenges that they face, and of course with the allocation of appropriate resources, I think nonetheless, holding institutions accountable is really important because it's one of the various things that we can do to bring more equity and close equity gaps in higher ed. So to me, I'm not surprised necessarily, but I am happy to see that this has stayed over time. So to me, that's the one thing that has stood out over time that I've been at New America and been watching how varying degrees in Americans' opinions change or don't change. Ernest, how about you? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that was about to say the same thing. I'll switch to my second term of backup. Just in case. Yeah, you know, for me, what has been particularly noteworthy, surprising and also unsurprising and also kind of compounding, I'm cheating a little bit here, has been the drop this year in particular of Americans who believe that colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the way that things are going in the country across, you know, from this year to sorry, the 2021 duration from the 2020 iteration. You know, it's obviously not worthy because this is kind of one of the questions of varying degrees that best gets at and best illuminates how Americans are consuming kind of the value proposition of higher education in college, you know, and that has severe implications, obviously, for how it's funded, how it's legislated. You know, this continued to kind of pull it as a political process around higher education. It was the people in that word. You know, the drop is, in a sense, unsurprising if you consider how tumultuous the political discourse and the polarization around higher education has been over the past few years, but it's surprising in that higher education's consistent battle with the question of work, right? Is very rarely one that higher education's lost, right? Even considering, you know, the two stories that we tell about higher education and what people experience, even considering, you know, all the drama we've had over for profit institutions over the past few years, you know, higher education usually kind of comes out on top. So people continue to believe that it's worth it, and it is, but it's very interesting just to see that drop happen in the course of a year. Of course, a number of things like both Rachel mentioned, a number of things that have contributed to that. But still, it's fascinating to see that kind of drop in the public opinion. It's one of those ones that I'll be paying attention to in the survey as time goes on. Yeah. Great. Ashley? Yeah, so I would say one particular finding that was surprising to me this year was around the percentage of adults in general and the percentage of students who felt that colleges did extra things in light of COVID, including extra basic needs supports, those sorts of things. I found it surprising that on a whole, students tended to actually have slightly more positive views about what the institutions did than adults in general. So it maybe makes me think that institutions aren't messaging to the public as a whole. Some of the things that they're doing that students are seeing, but the public isn't seeing. But even though students had a more positive view, generally fewer than half of students still felt that these institutions were doing these extra steps. There were some that were over half, but generally it was lower. I think institutions feel like they are doing a lot, but then the perception doesn't really necessarily reflect that. So I think institutions maybe aren't messaging to the public the way that they think that they are, some of the things that they're doing to support students in the pandemic. Interesting. I'd love to unpack more of that in a bit as well. Sophie and Rachel as two people who've kind of had the ability to oversee this now for five years. What other sort of surprising or confounding results have you found during that time? I can kick less of a start. So I would say no particular result in general for me. The one thing that I am proud that varying degree has been able to do in the past year and continue to do this year is the ability to track responses across different demographic groups. I think this is one particular thing that is very unique to varying degrees. Like we present our data not just by party ID, even though that's usually the thing that we mostly report on, but also by age, generation, race, race and ethnicity, household income and like this year we also have student status and student loan borrowers status. So I think this is, and like for me the fascinating thing is to like look at the response and look at the responses different across demographic groups. So like the questions that I mentioned earlier about like college reopening plan in for the full semester of training, training. I think like, so we see drastic difference among demographic, among Democrat and Republican. We also see significant responses among like, white versus people of color. So yeah, that's something for anyone who interested in varying degrees. This is like a very like unique opportunity to actually learn about like perceptions of higher ed across demographics in America. Yeah, I would say for me, what has been confounding this year and where I'm struggling a bit is that, I didn't mention this in the data presentation, but to Ernest's point, we saw this decline in whether or not people believe that higher education or colleges and universities are leading the country in a positive or a negative direction. So it's still in the majority positive, but pretty significant decline this year. Also this year though, like in tandem with that data is that we've asked since 2019 who should be more responsible for funding higher education. So this is a forced choice question where there's not like that much global room other than just like literally skipping the question or saying, I don't know, but you have to choose one. Do you think it's the government because it's good for society? Is that who should fund it or is it the student because they're the ones who personally benefit? And since 2019 to 2020, it remains pretty steady in favor of government at 63%. But we saw a 6 percentage point decline this year. So it's still again in the majority where 57% say it should be government because it's good for society. But I can't really explain that decline other than again, what the craziness of this year, institutions and how they dealt with COVID-19 and the recession and the murders of George Floyd and Brown and Taylor. So I'm trying to figure that out, but it's definitely a conundrum for me, particularly too, when you pair it with like all the things we're seeing about people wanting higher ed to be more affordable. So I'm just like, well, they want higher education to be more affordable. They want Biden and Congress to prioritize affordability. And yet they also are starting to lean a little bit more in the direction of students should fund it because they're the ones who personally benefit. So I'm having a little bit of trouble reconciling those. And honestly, like who knows if it's a blip of a trend given this year, but it's definitely something I'm gonna watch next year. Yeah, it's definitely fascinating. And I do wonder too, how much of that is just, I feel like political awareness about government. And as you said, institutions and all of these things have really sort of peaked over the last year in ways, but it will be interesting to see if that's gonna be sustained in non-election cycles and when maybe things level out a bit. Great, well, I'm gonna ask each of you now just some specific questions, but please, others should feel free to weigh in if you have other things you wanna add to people's answers here. So Ernest, I think it's a good place to start here. As a former co-author and someone who can now sort of refer to varying degrees data in your new role at Shio, how do you think these data provide value to various stakeholders, such as your members? And what are the data points that you find yourself referencing the most either in the past or that now that there's a new batch of data, you're gonna see yourself really sort of using that to propel your work moving forward? Yeah, no, thank you for asking. You know, public opinion right next to evidence-based research is a critical component of policy making, right? Especially for our members of the state higher education executives who are largely concerned with the funding of higher education from states and the funding of adjacent processes like state post-secondary data systems, for example, which is what I work on at Shio. So synthesizing public opinion, research and politics, kind of what the blue atmosphere is, creates a lot of the landscape for which our members act. For example, Shio just released a report that found that when states have funding to public institutions, institutional revenue declines, enrollment is impacted in graduation rates and completion rates also decline, but that political effect has kind of a public opinion of opinion effect as well, which our members then have to manage while working to bolster higher education in their respective states, the research and political advocacy, bolster funding, et cetera, et cetera. So, I certainly don't envy the work that a lot of them have to do managing this, but that's certainly why like neovering degrees and another public opinion on higher education, it's important to them. As far as what I find myself referencing most often, slash one, I'll continue probably reference the most, especially the one where Shio is the data point on whether Americans think they can get a high quality education after high school, that's also affordable, and whether they think that'll lead to well-paying jobs, something that, again, our states are wholly concerned with, even from a data perspective, even thinking about state post-secondary data systems, which again is my word, you can kind of track historically when a lot of states began to collect data elements and began to link their state post-secondary data systems to workforce data systems, et cetera, et cetera, along those lines. So that's something that I'll definitely be looking and see how the public opinion shifts on that if it does in future years. So sorry, I think you're muted. Yeah, I can't hear you. Yeah. Unmuted, I'm sorry. It's bound to happen one time. Sorry about that. Ali, I was gonna say, I'm hopping back over to you now because I know that New America and Shio have been working for over a year on a joint project about the effects of the pandemic on higher education and varying degrees this year sort of reveals how Americans feel colleges and universities have handled the pandemic, which we sort of started to touch on a little bit in terms of reopening and supporting their students. And so can you speak a little bit more about how this data puts into perspective, what you've been hearing about students and institutional needs during the pandemic? Yeah, for sure. We did several focus groups with students through this project. And so we got to hear in detail how students felt about the opening and closing of colleges during the pandemic and just everything else that was going on in this past year. I think there was like one good thing that stood out to me in varying degrees and then one not so good thing. The good thing is actually mentioned is a lot of students, like when you break it down by current student status, a lot of students felt that colleges were actually following through and providing some of the basic resources that they needed and doing a relatively good job at handling this pivot during this really crazy time. But at the same time, we know from some of the other data in varying degrees and also what we've heard from institutional leaders and from students throughout the year is that this is really unequal. It really depended on what the resources at a college looked like. And so it's good to see that people felt that overall colleges were doing a good job, but once you're on the ground, it can look pretty different. The other thing is the return to in-person classes was very, very politicized and very much a personal preference kind of opinion. And so it's been hard to see like, I mean, thankfully varying degrees offers a really good high level look at this, but just like throughout the year, it was really difficult to see like how colleges should respond. Should they come back in person? Should they not? Because it really just came down to political preference for a lot of people. And it was also very politicized state by state. And then the last thing that I'll say from this project is we've taken a really deep dive on online learning. And so like learned how this kind of works, what some good practices are. We learned that it's not always actually cheaper for colleges to go online or to provide online classes. So I think as Ashley mentioned, there might be some messaging, if possible, some messaging issues that we could work through in the future, especially considering that people are going to want more online options coming out of the pandemic because there is an expectation that they should be cheaper, that they don't bring a lot of the other value ads that in-person classes do. But they're not always, online learning is not always cheaper for the institution. So I think there has to be some messaging around that and really transparency about what this costs the institution and what it costs students. Absolutely. And actually, Ashley, to this point, this kind of dichotomy about having online students versus in-person students and how that was really politicized in general, I think that in-person education in a lot of ways, for certain student demographics is incredibly important for reasons that might happen beyond just what takes place within a classroom and the teaching and learning and thinking specifically about food insecure students who rely on their colleges to help them provide food and shelter and some of these other basic necessities. So I know that two years ago, when you were one of the co-authors of varying degrees, you took an in-depth look at food insecurity on two campuses and sort of paired it with varying degrees national data on food insecurity. What did you find then that you think is applicable now to the sort of current basic needs and security that many of today's students are facing, both due to the pandemic, but that is going to persist beyond the pandemic and existed before as well? Yeah, thanks so much for that question. And just before I jump in, just wanna say this is me speaking from my personal capacity and not from my employer. So I'm just gonna start with like a very baseline and it's gonna sound very basic to all of us, but we're also people who are on a webinar on higher education in the afternoon. I think one thing that this study and others have pointed out is that food insecurity is an issue that college students face. Perception versus reality, that section in varying degrees, often shows that the public's perception of what is going on in higher education is not always the reality of higher education. So I think that there can be some disconnects between the public and policymakers and what's actually happening on campuses, including food insecurity. So I think one thing that the in-depth look did and also the data from varying degrees and also the data that tons of other organizations are putting forward is that this is an issue and we need to continue talking about it. And I think that these conversations have led to some positive outcomes such as SNAP being expanded to college students during the national emergency pandemic, unemployment insurance, also being extended to some college students in the national emergency. So I think these conversations have actually contributed to some of the positive moves that have been made for students right now. I think it's also important to move beyond just beyond thinking about the numbers of students and think about what these numbers mean. So in the 2019 data and other measures of food insecurity, there are different ways that it can look. It can look from reducing the quality of meals to worrying about meals running out and you won't be able to buy more or it can be as extreme as skipping meals or not eating as much. We need to think about what students who are in these sorts of situations are actually going through in the sort of mental complexities that they are trying to think through how to budget their meals or how to weigh maybe about paying rent versus buying groceries for their family. These are a lot of mental gymnastics that students have to go through and then we're thinking about also their students. So they're supposed to also be focusing on classes and doing coursework. And then in light of the pandemic, as we all know, this has created even more mental complexities. We're trying to think about what's safe, what do I feel comfortable with, what's a healthy behavior. If they're a caregiving student, they might have student, their children at home and how do you home school these, when they aren't in person. So there's already, for food and secure students, some other things on their mind beyond schoolwork and then you add the schoolwork and then you add the pandemic concerns and it's just really, really challenging for these students. And on this note, the in-depth look where I talked with the University of Maryland leaders and also Dr. Edinburgh Bunker Hill really talked about the impact that these students' stories that show what food and security actually means for these students have been really key in kind of changing some attitudes about food and security and realizing that basic needs and security actually is an issue and it's a completion issue and it's just a human issue and amplifying student voices is really key in trying to change some of these systems. And then finally on system change, we need to think about how this is a systemic problem. So campuses can have food pantries and that's great and we want to encourage that but like Dr. Edinger and other campus leaders have repeatedly said we can't food bank our way out of this issue. So we need to think about how to reform social safety net supports in order to better support students because going back to the original thing I said where this is an issue that we know about but not everyone else may not realize the importance of it or like the depth and severity of it. That sort of assumption is why a lot of these policies currently students can't access a lot of social safety net supports. So we need to kind of change the system and then when we change the system we need to think about how to connect students with the system. So a GAO study found that even when students are eligible for SNAP they access it at very low rates often because they don't know that they're eligible or the campus navigator who's helping these students may not know that they're eligible. So just because you create a system doesn't mean that students are going to be able to plug into it easily. So I think we need to think about ways to help them be able to plug in and access the supports that they need. A good example of this recently is the FCC broadband benefit for Pell eligible students. They sent out an email to students who found a FAFSA and a Pell eligible to let them know that they could be eligible for this monthly broadband benefit. So I think that there are some thoughts about how to better connect students with the system. So I think we need to continue those sorts of conversations of how to streamline that and make it easier for students to get supports. Great. So Rachel and Sophie, just to kind of close this whole portion of questioning out, I mean, I think you've already been able to see how powerful of a tool public opinion research and data can be when it comes to fueling really important conversations that we need to be having and giving us different perspectives and angles. But once again, just now that you've been conducting higher ed, both qualitative and quantitative research for the past few years, what value in your mind is having this kind of public opinion data bring to the field? And are there any other lessons that you'd like to share with others who are interested in engaging in this type of work moving forward? And once again, others, please feel free to weigh in if you have other thoughts as well. I can go first. So I would say one of the things that I really like about working in this space is that we have an ability to amplify student voice. We don't really have not the greatest collective organizing effort of students in this country. We have a lot of organization around industry, like the higher education lobby, but less among the students. And so the higher education lobby and students, sometimes their voices align, but sometimes they really don't. And so it's really important to hear what's going on on the ground. And one of my favorite things to do is to attend and listen into focus groups. It always gives us lots of ideas of research to conduct, to follow up with, with quantitative research, to kind of hear how the tone and tenor of conversations may be changing around certain issues. And it's just always been really insightful. A lot of our work, because we're working in the policy space, for me, it's always been hard to straddle that line between working with students and then working in the policy space on behalf of students. And for me, it's always been a struggle. And so I like work that takes me back to listening to students and trying to amplify their voice and understand what their lives look like. I'll also say that something to flag that we've struggled with over the years, frankly, is the terminology higher education. We have a ton of jargon in this space. We say higher education, we say post-secondary, we say education opportunities after high school, colleges and universities, where not everybody attends. Some people don't think community colleges are college, which drives me bananas. But all of this to say is that even you'll notice in our survey, we have some amount of inconsistency. And that's because, for the most part, we like to call higher education education opportunities after high school because we wanna recognize that we're not just talking about associate degrees and above. We're talking about lots of learning opportunities that are post-high school, but we will lose some of our tracking data if we norm all of our questions, making that change in nomenclature. So it's just been really interesting thinking about even the terminology you use and how it can change people's understanding and interpretation of questions. So as you work, for people who work in this space, just be very careful with the terms that you choose because, again, we'll have lots of impatience on how people answer questions. Absolutely. I just want to second what Rachel said about the values of doing public opinion work, I think. I'm a very, I started in this space, in this policy space, doing higher education policy. So I, and like Rachel brought me into varying degrees very, like when I was doing interns. So that's when I realized the importance of being able to listen to the difference perspective that you don't often listen to, you don't often get to know just in Washington, DC. And I have always really grateful to be able to do this type of surveys and to do so focus through when you, like it's a way for us to reach out to the students, the stakeholders that we care about in this space. And in terms of lessons actually, we have quite a few, like I love personally, I learned quite a few lessons doing varying degrees, like I was four years now. So the first thing I would say is to be the ability to ask the right questions is not just like framing the questions in a way that objective, that is not leading, but also think about how you're gonna interpret the result of that question when you get the result, like many a time when we, like we have, like we really love the questions, but it just took us so long to find a way to interpret the result and that it's not confusing to everyone that's actually like, that's actually like really make the number stand out and really meaningful. And then another lesson that I guess, like I should be aware of that, but what happened with COVID last year when we fielded the surveys in February, right before everything, right before the outbreak and before we went on the lockdown and then we released the survey, the data actually in May, when we in the midst of the pandemic, when we have, when the country was going through the very difficult phase of the pandemic, we have to like, what part of the challenge of last year was like, how can we make our data relevant now? So think about like, so one of the thing that now whenever I sit down and like create a new survey, like I always have to ask myself, how this question is how the fighting, like relevant during the time we asked the surveys and also relevant when we released the survey, this for surveys for study like this, it's not like political polling when you're just like doing something very quickly and just release it out, like just in a matter of days for many reasons, usually there's like a gap of a couple of months between the time we filled the survey to the time we'd actually released the data. So how to make those data still relevant to people, it's always, it's something that I have to like be more aware of. It's not like every year you're gonna have a pandemic, but yes. No, God willing. So, yeah. So thank you to everyone for, I already see that there are some questions coming in. So please go ahead and I'm gonna turn it over to Q and A. I have one more lightning round question for every single person on this panel and then we'll turn to the audience Q and A. So let's pretend that it's 2026 and we've all gathered again here and it's the varying degrees 10 year reunion anniversary for the survey. I'd love to know in just a couple words or less, like where do you think the next big sticking points are gonna be or hot button issues in higher ed or do you anticipate another five years of fairly steady results? Ashley, let's start with you. Yeah, so I think that there will still be some things that are steady concerns about affordability and accountability. Those are just longstanding issues. I don't see them going away in the next five years. One thing that I could see coming to the surface is about admissions. So the Supreme Court is deciding this summer whether or not to take up the Harvard case on affirmative action admissions at Yale. And so if the Supreme Court does take up that case and changes affirmative action, I could see that being a hot issue on then the next few years. Interesting, Ernest? Yeah, agreed on the admission. I think that would be really interesting to track what public things are on that over the next few years. Kind of along the same, in the same round a little bit, test optional opinions. I'm very interested to see in the next few years, especially like one how the pandemic has changed public opinion on that. Obviously the pandemic has changed a lot of policy around that, a lot of colleges have made decisions about test optional or not test optional over the past year. And it'll be interesting to see if those stick. And again, what that confluence of actual policy has changed and what the public thinks looks like. I also, I think a lot of us said that I'm gonna be interested to see track over the next few years, how Americans feel higher education is contributing to kind of the impact that it's having on the country. Ali? I think and I hope that a question that we explore in the next five years is how higher ed is doing in terms of closing equity gaps, specifically racial equity gaps. I think the racial reckoning in this past year is something that could kickstart more of that conversation across the country. And I hope that we as a country and as people working in higher ed, take more time to really be intentional in thinking about whether this system is truly being the end of opportunity that we think it should be. Or if it's actually continuing to perpetuate inequity. So I would love to see and hope that we see more opinion on that in the coming years. Sophie? I would say one thing the pandemic show us is that, show us about higher ed is that only learning, I mean, online learning is gonna be here to stay and not just online learning, I think in the next couple and moving forward, they're gonna be just more and more integrations of technology into higher education, changing the ways to learn and how we think of quality in higher ed. So I think for varying degrees in the next few years, that is an area we definitely need to explore to see how that would change American's perspective of the value that higher ed can bring. And Rachel? I mean, I guess like, who the heck knows what the next five years are gonna bring because like the last five years have brought a lot and it's like, well, how could our lives be any crazier than they currently are? And it's like, well, I guess maybe I will see you in five years and we shall see. But I guess my concern is that we're starting to see this sort of like trending down on a variety of indicators in sort of a negative way. And is that gonna continue over five years? You start to see these slight like 2%, 3% dips, but then when you start extrapolating out, like what does that look like five years from now and how are people gonna like really sour on higher education? Especially as we are going to see a very public debate over the next couple of years with the federal government's influence in higher education, like Biden announced the American Families Plan, we're talking about free college, we're talking about debt forgiveness, the administrative debt forgiveness and what that might look like, expansion of income driven repayment and the regulatory agenda and all of this. And I just don't know what, if anything, that will influence people's decisions. I would think that if we do get to a place where we get free college, that would be pretty influential on people's opinions about higher education moving forward. And I'd be interested to see any political, politicization of that issue because I could see a difference, a partisan divide on sentiments on higher education in that case as well. Great. Well, I'm gonna start reading, we've gotten some good questions coming in and actually this one is fairly related to the response you just gave Rachel, but somebody's asking, do you think that the decline in wanting the government to fund higher education is a pushback on what has been an increased support of socialism and anti-capitalism amongst our younger generation? Have you seen any sort of interesting generational divides in the data there? That's a good question. And off the top of my head, no, but usually the younger generations are more pro and Sophie can maybe correct me if I'm wrong, but they tend to be more, like we need more funding, we need more like free college debt forgiveness and we need, yeah, the government funding it because it is a good versus society. Now I'd have to double check to be sure on that, but I actually think the pushback comes from older generations, from more white respondents and from more conservative respondents of that Venn diagram as well, there's a ton of overlap, right? We know that the Republican Party is wider and older. So that's where you'll kind of see the difference in pullback when looking at the data, but because I don't have like all the cross tabulations in front of me right now, I can't say a hundred percent for sure, but that's the trends that we usually see. Great, and just kind of sticking with that theme and also the caveats that you don't have all the cross tabs open. Another question is in relation to saying thank you for bringing up some of the inconsistencies and language that we use in post-secondary ed in that education post-high school can also mean pursuing the trades and apprenticeships. And so this question is asking or pertaining to sort of regional variations, has your data illustrated any distinctive public opinions based on urban or rural populations or West, Midwest, East, et cetera? I can type that, but yeah, Rachel, I mean, we do have that data that that's cross tab. You can actually see if you go to our data tool, we do have extrapolate result by regions Midwest versus South and by urban versus rural. And to be honest, maybe that's something that I haven't been able to really focus on, but when we look over some of the findings, we normally don't see a lot of differences across the different regions. So that's my take, but there might be like differences for some particular question. Yeah. I would say two, go ahead. Yeah, I would say two this year. And I just put, everybody should have seen the data tool of which you can click on like different demographics on the left side and underfunding, we had a question that we didn't report out this year that was more for informational purposes, but we've been tracking whether higher education is fine the way it is, like this statement, whether you agree with it or disagree with it over the past five years. And we haven't changed the statement because again, we're tracking it, but we did ask this year like, well, what do you consider higher education? We offered like a laundry list of like post high school educational opportunities. And we had people sort of say, like, yes, I consider this higher education. Yes, I consider this higher education. And there was like certainly variability. Most people in the majority thought everything was higher education, except there was a bit of a divergence with a registered apprenticeships. And so I would encourage you to take a look at that data, which to Sophie's point, you can then disaggregate by region, but if you want to see if there's any statistically significant differences, you have to go to the download and actually download across tasks. Great. Ernest, this might be a great question to have you kick us off here. Somebody asked, how is higher education contributing to the economic recovery post pandemic? And does the public see the benefit of higher ed as a brain trust to help solve problems? Yeah, I think that's a great question. Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I do think it's a little early to say, necessarily quite all the ways that higher education may or may not be contributing to the economic recovery. We're coming off of a year where enrollments have been lower in higher education and quite frankly, we're coming off of a year and kind of a recession that has not, despite predictions that looked a lot like some of certainly the 2008 recession and some past recessions as well, we saw an uptick in enrollment to some sectors of higher education in the midst of kind of economic downturn. So the jury is still, I think, out on how higher education is contributing, but there are certainly paths that higher education collectively can take, paths that I think the administration has, the Biden administration has spent on kind of talking about and that are taking part of the discourse right now, in particular around some of the discussions on free college, free community college in particular, in kind of free college for returning adults is a very specific section of the free college discussion. But certainly, I'm open to like other analysis from other panelists as well. I'm not sure that we can say for certain, whether or not, you know, in the midst of a kind of aftermath of this pandemic and middle of this economy and economic recovery, the impact that higher education has had so far. So unless anyone else has an additional take can see into the future that way, I think that in the interest of time, we're gonna have to wrap it up with this particular question. Time flies when you're having fun, but Rachel, I will kick it back to you to sort of close us out today. Yeah, I just wanna, it was lovely to see everyone and I hope again, like everybody is safe and healthy and that maybe next year, we can do something in person, which will feel very novel after doing this two years remotely. And of course we will always keep our remote option because if we've learned anything this year, people are approaching our work in different ways and we want that opportunity to be available for everyone. And so, I mean, with that, thank you, Tamara. Thank you, panelists. Again, visit varyingdegrees.org. I put the link to our data tool in the chat and it was wonderful seeing everyone and please keep in touch.