The Rant Podcast
A bi-weekly podcast focused on pulling back the curtain on the American higher education system and breaking down the people, the policies and the politics. The podcast host, Eloy Ortiz Oakley, is a known innovator and leader in higher education. The podcast will not pull any punches as it delves into tough questions about the culture, politics and policies of our higher education system.
The Rant Podcast
How Americans Feel About Higher Education with Sophie Nugyen
Americans still believe a college education opens doors, but patience is running out for a system that too often feels overpriced, inflexible, and out of touch. We sit down with New America’s Sophie Nguyen to unpack the Varying Degrees 2025 survey and what the data really says about confidence, cost, and the changing needs of working learners. The headline: value and frustration now live side by side.
We dig into where Americans agree across party lines—purpose, value, and the importance of job training—while also highlighting what people expect beyond employment: critical thinking, communication, and civic readiness. Sophie explains how opinion has stayed surprisingly stable over nine years, even as support dips slightly on questions about return on investment. We connect the dots to affordability, student debt, and the programs that fail to deliver promised outcomes, then explore clear moves leaders can make to rebuild trust.
From UMGC and WGU to ASU and SNHU, we point to models delivering flexibility at scale: online-first design, competency-based pathways, credit for prior learning, and embedded student support. We talk about why the media spotlight on elite campuses distorts public perception and why local open-access institutions deserve a louder voice. With AI reshaping work and adults needing to upskill multiple times, states that act now on flexible, stackable, and transparent pathways will lead the talent race.
Ready to rethink what college looks like for working adults—and how we tell that story with evidence, not hype? Tap play, then share your take. Subscribe, leave a review, and pass this along to someone who cares about making higher education work better for more learners.
https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/reports/varying-degrees-2025-americans-find-common-ground-in-higher-education/
NewAmerica.org
Eloy@4leggedmedia.com
Hi, this is Eloy T. Zoakley and welcome back to the Rant Podcast, the podcast where we pull back the curtain and break down the people, the policies, and the politics of our higher education system. In this episode, I get to sit down with Sophie Nguyen. Sophie is a senior policy manager at New America and she heads the public opinion portfolio for the organization. Sophie led the surveying of Americans and how they're feeling about higher education. And the title of the survey is called Varying Degrees, 2025. The latest survey is available on their website at newamerica.org. I'll sit down with Sophie and talk to her about what are the themes that she sees coming out of the 2025 survey, how they compare to previous surveys, and her thoughts about why Americans are feeling a level of frustration with higher education today. The Varying Degrees 2025 survey falls in line with many surveys that I've seen recently. As a matter of fact, my organization, College Futures, recently partnered with Gallup here in California to survey working age adults. And much of the same issues that we saw come up in the Varying Degrees Survey, we see coming up in the Gallup survey here in California, as well as Gallup surveys from across the country. Americans are feeling a sense of frustration. At the same time, they're still telling us that they believe that a post-secondary pathway, a quality post-secondary pathway, is still a ticket to the American dream or here in California to the California dream. So what's the disconnect? People still feel that higher education provides value, particularly for themselves, for their children, for their communities. But at the same time, they're expressing deep frustration with the way higher education is serving them these days. With the cost of higher education. Over and over again, we see cost coming up as one of the greatest sources of frustration, both in terms of the upfront cost and the amount of debt that learners have to take on. And it's also one of the greatest barriers to entry and one of the greatest reasons that learners stop out of their college experience. Another frustration that we heard come up here in California, as well as you'll see across the nation, is the frustration with the way higher education serves working age adults. Higher education is not designed for them. I think back on my own experience, coming out of the United States Army back in 1988. Having a daughter, having to raise a family, having to find work, not having any of the skills that I obtained in the United States Army transferred to any sort of education. I worked for several years before I entered college. And fortunately I found a community college. I then transferred to the University of California, Irvine. But you know what? Much of the way that we offer higher education back in the early 90s when I went to college, especially for working age adults, works pretty much the same way today. Not much has changed. Fortunately, today there are other options. I recently interviewed Greg Fowler from UMGC. UMGC is doing a great job of meeting working learners where they're at. I wish I would have had an option like that back in 1988. And we also have examples like Western Governors University, ASU, Southern New Hampshire. But by and large, traditional higher education has not changed a bit. And we're living in a point in time where if institutions do not change, they're going to become less and less relevant. Because access to information, access to skill acquisition, access to learning is becoming much easier to get to. And so back to the example of California, College Futures, we've been looking deeply at what's going on with working learners. As a matter of fact, we launched a$4 million funding opportunity to be able to build a new set of partners and look at a new set of ideas on how California can better serve working learners, how it can reimagine its higher education system to design with the working learner in mind. This is no longer an issue of it'd be nice to have. This is an issue of must-have for states like California and for all 50 states. We're at a point in time where the impacts of the workforce, the impacts of AI on the workforce, the new economy that's being created are going to put learners further and further behind if they don't have access to quality post-secondary pathways. So this isn't just an issue for those individuals who are at the lowest rungs of wages or who have had no access to higher education, some access to higher education, but no credential. Or even those who have had access to higher education and have a credential. Every worker, every adult learner is going to need to be able to upskill and reskill multiple times during their career. If a state like California wants to continue to be competitive, wants to continue to be the fourth largest economy, wants to be an inclusive economy for all Californians, then it must take this moment to reimagine its post-secondary systems with urgency. So I hope that in my conversation with Sophie, you'll pick up on some of the frustrations Americans are telling us. And I hope that we as a higher education community finally take this serious. Look at the examples of the UMGCs and WGUs and rethink how we organize ourselves and design for the working learner. That doesn't mean that all education needs to be online or competency based. We have to create multiple pathways. But these are no longer the outliers. These are no longer you know the weirdos in the class. These are examples of quality higher education happening at scale. And so institutions like we have here in California, whether it be the California Community Colleges, the California State University System, and even the University of California need to begin to reimagine how they deliver their education and do it with urgency. We don't have much more time, folks. Americans continue to lose faith in the higher education system, particularly the traditional higher education system. And we must do more to meet learners where they're at. We need to create more opportunities in more places for more learners. So with that backdrop, please enjoy my conversation with Sophie Nguyen from New America. Sophie, welcome to the Rant Podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_00:It's great to have you, and thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedule to be with us and specifically to talk about the latest survey of Americans and how they're feeling about higher education. It's called Varying Degrees, and we'll jump into it. I'm anxious to find out what you're seeing in the data and what you're seeing in the surveys. But before we get into the survey, tell us about your work at New America and what your higher education journey was all about.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks for that question. I'm the senior policy manager with the Higet team at New America. So currently I uh manage our public opinion portfolio and also work on a variety of issues related to uh college completions and student support. I've been at New America for actually eight years now. This is when I started right after college. So it's technically the only way I have work uh in my professional career. I like what kind of like a variety of issues since I've been here, and now like public opinion is is something that I've uh been dedicating a lot of my time with. And how did it start like my high-ed journey? I would say uh let's start with college, actually. I think um, like when we were asked, like, what made me decide to to do high-ed policy? The thing like my first answer to them would be because I love college. I went to a very small private liberal art college in Massachusetts, uh, Malhoyam College. I think it was a like life-changing experience for me, like being in a space with uh a lot of like like-minded women, but also really received a lot of support from professors and also staff at school, and like at the time when I was still trying to find figure out what I want to do, what do I want to become? It was just uh like I would say a transformative experience for me. And that's when I came across New America was hiring an intern for the higher ed policy then. And that's when I came across that opportunity, yeah, and apply. And long story short, I got the internship and I'm still here after eight years.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's talk about higher ed. So, and specifically, let's talk about the varying degree survey. So, New America does the survey about every year. It'd been doing it for some time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And you're specifically looking at how Americans feel about higher education. And I think this is top of mind for many of us in higher education these days. There's been a lot of challenges, a lot of political attacks, a lot of uh a lack of trust in institutions, an erosion of confidence in the value of higher education. I know in my organization, College Futures, we recently did a survey along with Gallup and find people still see value in higher education but are but are questioning how they receive it, who receives it, who doesn't, and the cost of higher education. So let's jump into the most recent survey, and and I'll start by reading the the opening uh couple of sentences just to sort of lay the foundation here. It says higher education is under intensifying political and public scrutiny. I certainly agree with that. Facing challenges like federal funding freezes and overhauls to student aid programs, yet, despite deep divides in policymaking, New America's Varying Degrees 2025 survey reveals that Americans remain united in their beliefs about the purpose and the value of higher education. So let's jump into that. Let's start just by telling our listeners about the survey, who you surveyed, and how long you've been doing this.
SPEAKER_01:So, varying degrees, we survey of Americans' perspective higher educations. We have conducted the surveys since 2017. Um, so it's been this year, it's the ninth year that we have conducted the surveys. So we have nine years of data on how Americans feel about higher educations. The issues that we mostly focus on in the surveys are about value, like whether people think college is worth it, how they feel about the way higher education is going. And then we ask questions about funding, whether it should be the students or it should come from like the government, whether it's the federal on state government. And we also ask questions about accountability, like in terms of like outcomes that students should expect to get from college, and also what to do when, like how to hold, like whether people think colleges should be held accountable if like their programs doesn't lead students to the outcome that they promised. Sometimes we add new questions just to capture the moment, like opinion of the moment, like on the on like the huge topic of the moment. But yeah, like there's a set of questions that we ask year over years. And I would say that um like coming back to the the opening line that you just mentioned about like that you read from the survey about the purpose and the value of higher ed, like what you said, there has been a lot of challenges. This year has been, I would say, since I started working in this way and learning all sorts of things about higher ed, since 2017, no year has been a, I would say maybe a normal year. Uh like colleges went through COVID, like just like five years ago. A lot of, I would say, fundamental changes in the way that people learn and receive uh support from colleges into this moment where we are now, the whole sector is feeling the impact of it. Like the thing that we find in the survey is that yes, that is there has been a lot of like we're living in a moment there when it's still like there's hardly anything that Democrat and Republicans can agree with. What we find in our survey is that, yeah, like on a lot of issues, like there's still like gaps between Republicans and Democrats, but it doesn't mean that they disagree on everything. There's like questions about the purpose of college, what they should know for students and family and society. Like we find a lot of alignment.
SPEAKER_00:Let's talk about what you found. Americans are saying a lot of different things about higher education these days in the various surveys that I've seen. So what did you pick up in the survey? What are some of the common themes that uh people are saying about the purpose of higher education and the value?
SPEAKER_01:First thing first, I would say we find the surveys that a majority of Americans still believe that higher ed is worth the investment, and that they would still want the children to have some sort of education after high school, whether it's a certificate program, an associate degree, or a bachelor degree. It doesn't have to be, it just doesn't have to be a courier degree. And and and when it comes to questions about like the purpose and the missions of higher education, like we have like more than 90% of all Americans believe that, yeah, like job training is extremely important. And like and like expect that colleges and universities equip students with the skill and the knowledge that they need to prepare them for the jobs they're gonna take after college. But job training is not the only important goal of college. Like when we ask about like whether whether people think it's important that college prepare students to be a critical thinker or like an informed season or prepare students with like other skill sets such as communication and writing, it's very important for college to equip students with skill and knowledge that they need to be successful in their job at the college. But at the same time, we also see that job training is not the only outcome that Americans or the public would expect from college. When we ask uh about like whether it's important for college to prepare students to become informed citizens or critical thinkers, we have like a range of like around like 80 to 90 to more than 90 percent of Americans believe that these are like important skills that that college should equip students with. Yeah, and and we see strong alignment between Democrat and Republicans.
SPEAKER_00:So in your survey, tell us about who you surveyed. How many people did you survey? And uh it sounds like you broke it down, you were able to get information on whether they're Democrats, uh Republicans, were there also some independents in there as well.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. Um, so we surveys American adults, so those 18 years in a bowl. The sample size for the 2025 survey is around 1600, a little bit more than 1600. And our samples can be broken down by certain different demographics, not just political affiliations, but also like race and ethnicity, income level, educational attainment, or like even like student status or veteran status, look at the difference among other demographic groups, not just political affiliation.
SPEAKER_00:Great. And so as our listeners are are listening or watching this interview and they want to go uh pull down the report, I imagine they can just go to newamerica.org and click on the varying degrees 2025 survey, correct?
SPEAKER_01:Exactly.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. Great. So uh you've talked about the fact that you've done this report for several years. Are there any major shifts in opinion that you saw from the previous years to this year, or has it been a sort of a steady state of opinion going forward?
SPEAKER_01:First of all, I would say opinion, public opinion usually don't change a lot.
SPEAKER_02:Uh-huh.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, yeah. Like new, like before anyone who does this work new. Actually, yeah, people don't change their mind that often. And and that's something we find with our uh survey as well. Even like I would say um during the past nine years that we conducted the survey, uh, there has been a lot of fundamental shifts in higher education. Like I expect I thought would maybe like significant change people respond, but actually, when we look at respond from years over years, especially for questions that we have asked, like for example, since 2017 or 2019, um, like from like the very beginning of our survey, the response are pretty stable, especially like on those questions that we to provide students with the return on investment, or whether people think that college is fired the way it is. There's some fluctuations year over year, but yeah, like over like across the board we see numbers still pretty much uh remain stable. Having said that, and the questions around um like whether people think that college is um still worth the return on investment, for example, we noticed a slight declining trend. Like, yeah, from like 2019 when we asked that question for the first time to now, now it's still like like around 70% of people still think that yes, college is worth the return on investment. But compared to like when we asked the question for the first time in 2017, it was like 78%. Like now it's was like in 2025, it's like 74%. Yes, people still, a majority still believe in the value of college, but there's obviously some frustration there.
SPEAKER_00:I agree that it's it's a trend that we should be paying attention to because it's a trend that shows up in many surveys of Americans. Recent uh work that we did with Gallup, or recent work that uh Gallup did nationally showed similar frustration. Surveys that I have looked at over the years tend to center around frustration about cost and frustration that their degree or credential hasn't led to the kind of economic outcome that they were anticipating. Do you find similar themes in your survey?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I would say in our survey, costs still come up as some of the top concerns as to why people are like not feeling happy about high ed. Like affordability is definitely a key issue. Right. People like costs are still like people believe that to be like the number one reason why someone stopped out or like like no decide not to go to college when you conduct stuff, but it's just honestly actually very reassuring to see like other surveys show the same like some results. So that oh you well, yeah, like obviously we're confident with a methodology, but also like it's it's actually helpful to see other surveys actually confirm what you find as well. It it just like come back to the point that none of these issues is new and has been around for a long time, and for it to show up over and over again in multiple surveys across the year, and for not a lot of changes uh to happen to counter that directly, I think it's just add to another reason as like that, explain why. Um confidence for how you add is just being low right now. And yeah, it's just add to the frustration, like to just public to public frustrations.
SPEAKER_00:Right. No, I agree, and I and I'm glad that you made the point that this is not something new. This is certainly something I've been seeing uh in the water for almost the last decade. More and more frustration, more and more people who are not served well by higher education, the cost of higher education continuing to go up, the cost of financing, the amount of debt that you have to take on. So all these things have sort of led to this moment, and you know, you all continue to capture this sediment in the American psyche. Now, let me ask you one last question as we begin to wrap up. Given that you're sitting there receiving this public opinion and your background now in higher education policy and spending time at New Merit thinking about these challenges based on what you've seen in in the survey. What advice would Sophie have for policymakers or for higher education leaders uh who want to continue to improve how the public thinks about higher education? What would be your advice to them?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, first of all, there gotta be some definitely uh significant change to directly answers, like address these concerns about costs, about job outcomes, about like support, like issues around student support to help students get to the finish line. They definitely need to have action taken from like not just from the policy side, but also from the institution side. At the same time, I would say policy change. As we know, for policy will take time to happen. The current policy environment that we're in today, there will be a lot of challenges to see actions that would directly address like affordability um happen. But I I I think there's also other like actions that institutions can take that are likely to have more immediate outcome. They need to be able to tell a better story about themselves, why they matters, uh, what they're doing. I think there has been a huge disconnections between college and the public. Part of the reason is also, like, yeah, like we have 6,000 institutions in the US, a lot of them are open access, but a very small subset of them that are very exclusive and high-ranking themselves are those institutions that the public mostly hear about in the media. Right. There's a New York Times, peace come out, or Worst Journal Peace. It's not about the community college that is in their town, but it's always about the how about the Columbia or like some purple, some like flagship, like University of Virginia, like University of I don't know, it's just like a state flagship. And and even though those institutions don't represent how you're at, it feels like they do. And that's a huge problem because like a lot of the values and the missions that those institutions represent doesn't uh like portray themselves, doesn't connect with everyday Americans. When like when you when everyone just wants to find an option that's accessible to them, and what they see is like just the elite colleges with like very, very high team essence fee being featured over and over again. It's not just about like job training, right? It's also about like research and development and innovations and a lot of the things that they do can benefit the society at large. And and they need to be able to build a stronger message to create a more factful narrative for higher education that yeah, that make them feel relevant to just day-to-day American.
SPEAKER_00:Well, I think that's great advice, Sophie, and I really appreciate you taking the time to join us here on the RAM podcast to talk about um the New America Varying Degrees 2025 survey. Thanks for your work and thanks for being on the podcast.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks so much for having me. It has been a pleasure.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's been a pleasure having you, Sophie. So thanks for joining us, everybody. I hope you've enjoyed my conversation with Sophie Nguyen, the senior policy manager at New America. She was talking about the latest Varying Degrees survey that New America released, the Varying Degrees 2025 survey. You can access the survey and the data at the New America website at newamerica.org. I'll put a link to the report in the notes section of this podcast. If you're watching us on YouTube, hit subscribe. Continue to follow us, and if you're listening to us on audio, continue to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for joining us, everybody, and we will see you all again soon.
