January 11, 2008

What Colleges Must Do to Keep the Public's Good Will

By PATRICK CALLAN and JOHN IMMERWAHR

Colleges have lived a charmed life. According to the public-opinion studies that we have conducted over the past 15 years, many fields — athletics, accounting, politics — have lost the public's trust, but higher education continues to receive praise for its accomplishments, while criticisms usually fail to stick. But the honeymoon may be slowly coming to an end.

For the most part, people have held favorable attitudes toward higher education. When focus-group

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