Families are approaching college decisions as consumers, and they have real concerns. According to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey, seven in 10 Americans believe the U.S. higher education system is moving in the wrong direction. Those surveyed give colleges and universities poor or fair ratings for keeping tuition affordable (79%), preparing students for well-paying jobs (55%), and developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills (49%).
Students currently enrolled in college, however, tell a very different story. The 2026 Lumina Foundation-Gallup State of Higher Education survey found that 93% of enrolled students are confident their degree is teaching them the skills they need, and 90% believe it will help them find employment. Three-quarters say their education is worth the cost, and that confidence carries forward: 80% of graduates say their degree was critical or important for reaching their career goals.
Why the disconnect? Part of the answer is structural. Public perception of higher education is shaped largely by people who aren't in it, by sticker prices that obscure actual net costs, and by an industry that has historically been better at asserting its value than demonstrating it. Families deserve honest answers, not defensiveness. We in higher education must do in public what we ask our students to do in the classroom: provide evidence, show our work, and work to improve.
The case for college extends well beyond the outcomes families most often ask about. Decades of research, from the College Board's Education Pays series to recent Lumina Foundation-Gallup studies, document benefits that emerge gradually and reach widely: graduates vote and volunteer at higher rates, report better health and well-being, build social networks that open doors years after commencement, and carry forward habits of learning and inquiry--the kind of integrative thinking a liberal education is designed to cultivate--that compound over a lifetime.
Consider just one measure of civic life: a separate 2023 Lumina-Gallup study found that voting rates rise from 59% among Americans with no postsecondary education to 87% among bachelor's degree holders. These private gains ripple outward, strengthening the civic and economic life all of us share. Some of these effects resist tidy measurement; we cannot observe the life a student would have led without college, and what matters most in an education often reveals itself slowly. That is precisely why, as we work to rebuild trust through evidence and accountability, we must take care not to let the value of college shrink to only what can be measured quickly and easily. A first-destination salary fits neatly in a spreadsheet; a lifetime of engaged citizenship does not. An honest accounting of higher education's worth makes room for both--and being candid about what we can and cannot quantify is itself part of demonstrating value rather than merely asserting it.
The good news is that higher education can deliver exactly what students, families, and employers are asking for and more. But we need to make it more visible and measurable.
The latest AAC&U Employer Survey speaks to careers as one part of the value proposition where nine in 10 employers want graduates with AI skills, 96% emphasize the urgent need for graduates who can engage in constructive dialogue across disagreement, and more than 80% are significantly more likely to hire graduates who have completed internships, apprenticeships, and applied community-based projects. These are not abstract qualities. They are the outcomes of intentional, well-designed undergraduate education, the kind happening at colleges and universities across the country.
Many institutions are already building this infrastructure. At Rollins College, we have organized ours around a program called Gateway. Grounded in the four commitments of career exploration, campus involvement, community impact, and global learning, Gateway embeds evidence-based, high-impact practices into the student journey, developing the knowledge and skills that propel students toward meaningful lives and productive careers.
The programs within Gateway are purposeful and measurable. Our Gateway Fellows program, now in its eighth year and funded by an endowment, ensures that students, particularly those with financial need, can access meaningful internship experiences across healthcare, technology, finance, education, and the arts. Our Career Champions mentoring program tracks student growth across eight career-readiness competencies identified by the National Association of Colleges and Employers and recognized as career currency that students are building at institutions across the country.
At Rollins, we measure gains: students strengthen their ability to apply knowledge in relevant contexts, communicate effectively, and engage in intentional career planning. Applied community-based engagement, the very approach employers say they value most, allows students to bring classroom learning to real-world challenges including environmental sustainability, economic development, and food insecurity.
This is what students, their families, and employers are demanding: higher education that embeds outcomes into learning, demonstrates accountability, and shows results rather than asserts them. At institutions across the country--small liberal arts colleges to regional universities--presidents are rethinking how they communicate student outcomes. That work is serious, ongoing, and grounded in decades of research on learning and student development. It is also never finished. The emerging presence of AI is just the latest example of how higher education must continually adapt to remain relevant to the students it serves.
Colleges and universities have an obligation not just to do this work but to show it. In a moment of eroding institutional trust, the instinct to protect reputation can crowd out the harder, more important work of transparency and evolution. Reclaiming public trust requires accountability and a willingness to adapt, to show, not just tell, how higher education is delivering value and will continue to do so.
Showing our work means measuring rigorously what can be measured and speaking honestly about what cannot. If we want the public to believe in higher education again, we must stop asking them to take its value on faith and start demonstrating how it is already working.
Higher education has done the work. Now we owe it to students--and to the public--to show it.
Brooke Barnett is the president of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.
