“Sociologists Natasha Quadlin and Brian Powell take us on a well-reasoned, accessible, and engaging journey of how public opinion has changed over time regarding college access and paying for it. Their findings suggest a cultural shift in the American mindset about higher education inequality, and Who Should Pay? merits a strong read to learn what it is and why.”
—Prudence L. Carter, Sarah and Joseph Jr. Dowling Professor of Sociology, Brown University

“One of the most pressing issues of today is whether a public college education should be free for every eligible high school graduate, and if so, how will it be funded? This provocative book based on over a thousand adults contacted before and during the pandemic discusses how public views of access and funding of higher education have changed. Addressing problems of individual versus collective interests, this excellent volume raises questions regarding our commitment to future generations of youth, democratic values, and American productivity.”
—Barbara Schneider, John A. Hannah University Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University

Americans now obtain college degrees at a higher rate than at any time in recent decades in the hopes of improving their career prospects. At the same time, the rising costs of an undergraduate education have increased dramatically, forcing students and families to take out often unmanageable levels of student debt. The cumulative amount of student debt reached nearly $1.5 trillion in 2017, and calls for student loan forgiveness have gained momentum. Yet public policy to address college affordability has been mixed. While some policymakers support more public funding to broaden educational access, others oppose this expansion. Noting that public opinion often shapes public policy, sociologists Natasha Quadlin and Brian Powell examine public opinion on who should shoulder the increasing costs of higher education and why.

Who Should Pay? draws on a decade’s worth of public opinion surveys analyzing public attitudes about whether parents, students, or the government should be primarily responsible for funding higher education. Quadlin and Powell find that between 2010 and 2019, public opinion has shifted dramatically in favor of more government funding. In 2010, Americans overwhelming believed that parents and students were responsible for the costs of higher education. Less than a decade later, the percentage of Americans who believed that federal or state/local government should be the primary financial contributor has more than doubled. The authors also find increased public endorsement of shared responsibility between individuals and the government in paying for higher education. They additionally examine attitudes on the accessibility of college for all, whether higher education at public universities should be free, and whether college is worth the costs.

Quadlin and Powell also explore why Americans hold these beliefs. They identify individualistic and collectivist world views that shape public perspectives on the questions of funding, accessibility, and worthiness of college. Those with more individualistic orientations believed parents and students should pay for college, and that if students want to attend college, then they should work hard and find ways to achieve their goals. Those with collectivist orientations believed in a model of shared responsibility—one in which the government takes a greater level of responsibility for funding education while acknowledging the social and economic barriers to obtaining a college degree for many students. The authors find that these belief systems differ among sociodemographic groups and that bias—sometimes unconscious and sometimes deliberate—regarding race and class affects responses from both individualistic and collectivist-oriented participants.

Public opinion is typically very slow to change. Yet Who Should Pay? provides an illuminating account of just how quickly public opinion has shifted regarding the responsibility of paying for a college education and its implications for future generations of students.

NATASHA QUADLIN is assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

BRIAN POWELL is James H. Rudy Professor of Sociology at Indiana University.

This is the second in a series of technical reports presenting tabulations of basic data resulting from questionnaires and interview schedules used in connection with the Russell Sage Foundation program of research on the social consequences of testing, which aimed to examine the possible social impacts of the use of standardized ability tests (such as intelligence, aptitude, and achievement tests) in schools and occupational settings in the United States.

DAVID A. GOSLIN was staff sociologist at the Russell Sage Foundation and author of The School in Contemporary Society.

Report of a conference sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation at the Sterling Forest Conference Center, Tuxedo, New York, June 12–14, 1972. Topics include the collection and use of student records and the classification, maintenance, and retention of such records.

Participants: Robert L. Arnstein, Paul H. Black, Edward J. Bloustein, K. Patricia Cross, Paul Doty, Robert M. Fano, David A. Goslin, George T. Gregory, Samuel Hendel, Michael A. Liethen, Walter P. Metzger, Jane D. Moorman, Drew Olim, Margaret E. Perry, Peter B. Reads, Vivien Stewart, Dyckman W. Vermilye, Alan F. Westin

David A. Goslin, Conference Chairman

An analysis of the practice, scope, and methods of recording facts in the daily work of public employment in various countries and a plan for standard procedure in the United States made for the Committee on Governmental Labor Statistics of the American Statistical Association.

Anabel M. Stewart and Bryce M. Stewart, Committee on Governmental Labor Statistics

Factors influencing American education are numerous, various, and complex; it is impossible to conceive of any single set of factors that adequately explain what is happening in our schools. This volume attempts to describe some aspects of the New York City school system in order to provide a factual basis and perspective for examining and planning educational programs and policies. Staffing, school organization and programs, population change and school enrollment, and permissive zoning are discussed.

Eleanor Bernert Sheldon was sociologist and executive associate at the Russell Sage Foundation. Raymond A. Glazier was chief of the Bureau of Community Statistical Services at the Community Council of Greater New York.

Morbidity in the Municipal Hospitals of the City of New York was the result of a pilot study, undertaken by the Departments of Hospitals and Health of the City of New York in cooperation with the Russell Sage Foundation, to test a plan for hospital morbidity reporting and to evaluate data thus obtained. The study was concerned with procedures for collecting periodic morbidity data from hospitals and with analysis of the statistics of the 121,952 patients discharged from 31 municipal hospitals during a six-month experimental period. Here is a comprehensive analysis of in-patient data, covering race, sex, age, diagnosis, length of hospital stay, condition on discharge, surgical interventions, etc., presented in explanatory text and 56 tables. Including recommended specifications for initiating regular periodic morbidity reporting by all New York hospitals, including cost estimates. Previous experience in hospital morbidity reporting is also summarized.

Marta Fraenkel was assistant to the commissioner and director of medical statistics and records service in the Department of Hospitals, City of New York.

Carl L. Erhardt was director of the Bureau of Records and Statistics in the Department of Health, City of New York.

Part of the Industrial Relations Series, a series by the Department of Industrial Studies of the Russell Sage Foundation investigating early twentieth-century experiments in the organization of relations between employers and employees in industrial enterprises in the United States. A case study of the administration of agreements between miners’ and operators’ organizations in the bituminous coal mines of Illinois.

Louis Bloch was statistician of the Department of Industrial Relations of California and a staff member of the Russell Sage Foundation.

A study of unemployment in New Haven published in 1932. Contrasts by sex, marital status, age, industry, and occupation are analyzed, among others.

Margaret H. Hogg, Department of Statistics, Russell Sage Foundation

Reports of fact-finding studies made as a basis for social action, arranged by subjects and localities. Reports to January 1, 1928.

Allen Eaton, Department of Surveys and Exhibits, in collaboration with Shelby M. Harrison, director, Department of Surveys and Exhibits, Russell Sage Foundation.

This 1942 volume is the fourth edition of Social Work as a Profession, originally published in 1935, detailing the vast growth of social work as a profession from its emergence as a humanitarian effort in the nineteenth century to the rapid changes in professionalization at the end of the 1930s. It includes census data on the number of social workers, as well as additional figures on salaries and educational and training.

Esther Lucile Brown was research associate in the Department of Statistics at the Russell Sage Foundation.