Turn Off the Thermostat

Over the past few years, public polls have shown a precipitous drop-off in popular support for higher education. But in recent months, pollsters have thrown the sector a lifeline.

An annual Gallup poll conducted in June and sponsored by the Lumina Foundation found a modest bump in public confidence in colleges and universities, with 42 percent of Americans saying that they had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher ed, six points higher than in 2024. A March 2025 NORC poll, sponsored by New America, found a similar result: 40 percent of respondents felt that higher ed “is fine how it is,” four points more than in 2024.

Despite the slight improvement in higher ed’s polling numbers as a sector, advocates of postsecondary education shouldn’t get too comfortable. The survey results probably don’t reflect a durable increase in public support for higher ed. Instead, as author and professor Jon Warner has noted, they seem to show evidence of what political scientists have termed the thermostatic effect. Understanding this concept is key to recognizing both the daunting situation that still faces higher ed and the meaningful opportunity the current moment represents to redefine our sector in the public mind.

First described by political scientist Christopher Wlezien in 1995, the thermostatic model of public opinion argues that voters express their positions on political issues in much the same way they approach the dial on a thermostat: turn it up when it’s too cold, down when it’s too hot. Similarly, on issues that are polarized politically, voters are less interested in the nuances of a particular policy than with the idea that the current government is doing too much or too little on a specific topic.

We see thermostatic politics in action all the time. At the most basic level, the concept explains why voters tend to vote for a president from one party, then turn around and vote against that party in the midterm elections. The thermostatic effect also sheds light on why public views on highly polarized issues often bounce around depending on who is in power. In 2024, for instance, public support for immigration as “a good thing” was at a ten-year low according to a Gallup tracking poll; just one year later, after electing a president who promised to curtail immigration, a record number of Americans now say immigration is good. Turn the thermostat up, then turn it back down.

What’s new in the 2025 data—and concerning, though perhaps not surprising—is seeing public views of higher education beginning to exhibit the thermostatic effect. That’s a sign that the bipartisan consensus around higher education as a positive force in American life is breaking down.

Indeed, we’ve seen evidence of that breakdown since at least 2017, when Republicans’ support for higher ed took a sharp downturn in a long-running Pew tracking poll. In 2015, Democrats were only 16 points more likely to support higher ed than were Republicans; in 2017, the difference was a whopping 36 points, a gap that continued in subsequent years. It’s worth noting that 2016 was also the first election to demonstrate significant educational polarization. For the first time, college-educated voters offered substantially more support to Democrats, with non-college-educated voters more supportive of Republicans. That gap, too, has continued (and widened) in ensuing elections.

Those twin polarizations—of party identification by education level, and of views on higher education by party—helped usher in a raft of state laws restricting various practices and ideas on college campuses. In 2025, for the first time, these government restrictions went national. And like most partisan initiatives, they seem to have engendered a thermostatic backlash from voters concerned that things are going too far—turning the thermostat back down.

Higher education advocates, however, should take only measured comfort. The latest polls do suggest that at least some of the public thinks the administration has overreached in its restrictions on colleges and universities, just as more than 650 college, university, and scholarly society presidents argued in “A Call for Constructive Engagement” organized by the American Association of Colleges and Universities in April. But we’ve yet to see evidence that bipartisan support for higher ed is on the rebound, that voters think they were wrong to turn up the thermostat on higher ed in the first place, or that they will not do so again the moment an administration perceived as more supportive of postsecondary education comes to power. Higher ed’s position with the public is still quite dire.

What the polls do indicate, though, is that—even if only for thermostatic reasons—some Americans who had turned against higher ed over the past few years are considering the sector with new interest right now. That, in turn, suggests that we have an opportunity to make our case for the value and purpose of higher education to the public. Our goal should be not to turn the thermostat down but to turn it off: to go beyond the politics of the moment and remind people of all political persuasions how vital colleges and universities are for helping students, communities, and our society.