Poll: Nearly half of parents don’t want their kids to go straight to a four-year college

The Hechinger Report

Jill Barshay

April 7, 2021

Anti-college sentiment greater among Republican, white and rural parents

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Fewer American parents are dreaming of sending their kids off to a four-year college immediately after they graduate from high school, signaling both a deepening political divide over the value of higher education and a shift in public sentiment toward career training.

A Gallup survey, commissioned by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, a philanthropic foundation, and released April 7, 2021, found that 46 percent of parents said they would prefer not to send their children to a four-year college after high school, even if there were no obstacles, financial or otherwise. Only a slim majority of parents — 54 percent — still prefer a four-year college for their children. (The Carnegie Corporation is among the funders of The Hechinger Report.)

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