Dear President Davis (August 2026)
Why Have People Lost Confidence in Higher Education?
August 5, 2026
President Elizabeth Davis
Furman University
3300 Poinsette Highway
Greenville, SC 29613
Dear Elizabeth,
I hope your summer is going well and that you have had the chance to take a real vacation. While I’m confident that even on vacation you have kept up with FFSA’s Substack postings, I want to highlight two important recent articles. First, we posted a webinar with Robert Shibley, Special Counsel at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), on legal protections for free speech at private institutions and adjacent issues like academic freedom, Title IX, and religious liberty. Even professionals sometimes misunderstand these protections, and our webinar clears away some of the confusion.
And on July 27th we posted an article by Kyle Beltramini, Senior Research Fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) on best practices for selecting a new university president. It’s a superb piece backed by decades of experience helping universities find the right leader.
In addition to these FFSA articles, a recent Gallup Poll on American’s declining confidence in higher education deserves attention. The findings are alarming.
In 2015 when Gallup first asked questions on confidence in higher education, 57% responded they were quite confident in higher ed. That number dropped to 38% in the latest poll. Similarly, the number of those expressing very little or no confidence rose from 10% to 25% in that same period. Democrats in 2026 have greater confidence in higher ed than Republicans (50% v 23%), but even the Dems have soured on colleges. In 2015, Democrats registered an impressive 70% level of confidence.
So, what’s going on?
“For those who lack confidence,” Gallup reports, “responses generally focus on three broad themes — perceived political agendas on college campuses (31%), the high cost of a college education (30%), and colleges not preparing students well for the workforce (25%).” Gallup goes on to note that “[m]entions of political and instructional/workforce preparation matters are down compared with last year, while mentions of cost are up. Even with more people citing cost this year, it is lower than it was in 2024, the first year the question was asked, when 35% mentioned it.”
For the first time, Gallup asked whether people thought AI would enhance or diminish the value of a college degree. It found that “Americans generally see AI as a threat to the value of a college degree, with 46% predicting that AI will make college degrees “somewhat less” (29%) or “much less” important (17%).” This is certainly a trend that must be watched.
While it is true American’s lack confidence in virtually all institutions, that does not mean we need to lose confidence in Furman. But we should heed the warning signs. The Gallup numbers reveal clearly that schools with a political agenda are not trusted. And for good reason. Parents send their children to college to be educated, not indoctrinated into whatever political fashion holds sway on campus. This is why FFSA has so “doggedly”, as you would say, insisted on viewpoint diversity on campus and in the classroom.
The numbers also send the unmistakable message that rising costs are an elementary reason for sinking trust in higher education. FFSA will be focused on this in the months to come as we examine the Furman bureaucracy as a cost center of amazing proportions.
I’m sure the Gallup findings do not surprise you. Still, they sharpen the focus on higher education’s core deficiencies—plainly visible to the public, yet too often ignored, denied, or ridiculed by the education establishment.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Salmon
President
Furman Free Speech Alliance