The Yale committee looked at a 2025 Pew Research Center survey that found 70% of Americans say higher education is heading in the wrong dire
By: Ingrid Jacques
Published: Apr 20, 2026
The Hamas terrorist attack set in motion much of this self-reflection. Indeed, Jewish students at Yale have claimed harassment and the Trump Education Department opened an investigation last year.
A new report from Yale University sheds light on declining public trust in higher education – and the responsibility universities must take for what’s happened.
That’s a start. And the report holds lessons far beyond the Yale campus.
In recent years, it’s become impossible to ignore the antisemitism, lack of free speech and ideological conformity at many of our leading educational institutions.
Throw in the fact that inflation-adjusted tuition has roughly doubled at four-year public and private schools in the past 30 years, and it’s easy to see why more Americans are second-guessing whether heading off to college is the sound investment it once seemed.
The Yale report, released April 10, is the result of a year-long effort by a committee of 10 professors to examine this decline in trust and offer some solutions. The report was commissioned by Yale President Maurie McInnis last April.
“Trust is earned by doing what you say you’re going to do – and, ideally, doing it well,” the committee wrote.
Apparently, universities haven't delivered.
Trust in higher ed has plummeted in the past decade. Why?
The report cites a Gallup poll that shows just how sharply trust in higher ed has fallen in the past 10 years.
In 2024, confidence in these institutions had dropped to a record low of 36% – down from 57% a decade ago, when those surveyed said they had “a great deal or “quite a lot” of trust in higher education. https://www.usatodaynetworkservice.com/tangstatic/html/usat/sf-q1a2z3584c02f3.min.html
The Yale committee also looked at a 2025 Pew Research Center survey that found 70% of Americans say higher education is heading in the wrong direction.
The committee identified three primary factors behind this decline in trust in the report:
"The first involves the soaring price of higher education in the United States, along with the perception that college, graduate, and professional school are no longer worth the money and sacrifice they demand.
"The second focuses on the college admissions system – specifically, the question of who gets in and why.
"The third includes an array of issues about what is said and taught on university campuses, including matters of free speech, political bias, and self-censorship. We also found important problems related to trust within the university itself, including concerns that grade inflation, new technologies, and bureaucratic expansion have undermined the university’s academic mission."
Many of these issues have received significant attention across U.S. universities, especially starting in 2025, when President Donald Trump prioritized trying to end antisemitism on campus, as well as targeting “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs that directly led to animus against Jewish students and created costly bureaucratic bloat.
The Trump administration has threatened to withhold federal funding from schools that don’t fall in line, and this has led to some major changes on some campuses – at least in the interim.
The reckoning is long overdue.
Oct. 7 brought many glaring issues to light
The Hamas terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, set in motion much of this self-reflection at American universities.
While the Yale report doesn't spend much time directly on antisemitism, saying the university experienced "less long-term friction than some of its peer institutions," it acknowledges the campus "has not been immune from pressures toward conformity, intimidation, and social shaming that have affected the rest of higher education."
Indeed, Jewish students at Yale have claimed harassment and the Trump Education Department opened an investigation last year into alleged antisemitism.
On campuses all over the country – from Harvard to Stanford – Americans have witnessed a very disturbing sight: Many students celebrated the attack on Israeli civilians and supported the terrorists who wreaked such devastation.
College presidents were subsequently woefully prepared to defend what their campuses were doing to protect Jewish students, many of whom were afraid at that time.
In December 2023, U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik went viral when the New York Republican grilled the presidents of three top universities, including Harvard. She outright asked them whether calling for the genocide of Jews violated their schools' code of conduct. And their lackluster responses led to the resignation of two of those presidents, and subsequently several more.
Stefanik has a new book, “Poisoned Ivies: The Inside Account of the Academic and Moral Rot at America’s Elite Universities,” detailing what’s gone wrong in higher ed and what remains to be done.
“It’s not just about antisemitism,” Stefanik recently told Jewish Insider, in an interview about her book. “This is broader higher education reform. … That was the canary in the coal mine issue that brought up so many broader issues that were wrong with higher education.”
The new Yale report seems to agree, and argues for a return to higher education’s most basic purpose.
“Universities exist to preserve, create, and share knowledge,” it states. “In one form or another, Yale has affirmed this mission for centuries. Staying true to that fundamental purpose, while remaining open to productive change, will be essential for building public trust in the years ahead.”
Other universities should take note.