The degree you were counting on

One · What happened

Fewer than a third call a degree very important

Gallup surveyed 1,200 adults from 3 to 24 August 2026. Three in ten, 31%, called a college education very important, which is four points under the 35% of 2025, the previous low in the seven times Gallup has asked since 1978. Another 39% said fairly important and 29% said not too important. In 2013, 70% of adults said college was very important, more than twice the share now.

A Lumina Foundation-Gallup survey cited in the report found just 12% of adults calling a four-year college education affordable. Megan Brenan, who wrote the Gallup report, offers cost as a partial explanation for the new low. The report says the long-term decline spans major demographic groups. Graduates and the other groups that have rated a degree highest still rate it higher than their counterparts do. Their own numbers have fallen over the years.

Gallup recorded the opinions of 1,200 adults about the degree. Whether colleges have earned the verdict and what government should do about loan balances are arguments for economists and lawmakers, and the poll did not try to settle either one. Its question was about how important people think a degree is. A reader can take the 31% as a fact about those opinions and ask what the number stirs in him.

Two · What it is doing

A verdict on the years you gave

Whoever paid for a degree, or is still paying for one, meets the 31% as an audit of those years. A parent hears the charge that he put a child’s future on the wrong thing, and the graduate with a balance hears it aimed at himself. Both are sitting in judgment on the money and the time they spent, a question Gallup put to nobody. Nothing in a poll of 1,200 adults was aimed at any household in particular.

Another reaction waits for the reader who skipped the degree. The 29% who call a degree not too important look to him like a vote in his favor. A man who is glad at another family’s loan balance is glad at their loss, and a survey result lets that gladness pass for an opinion about education. Gallup asked about the degree and did not ask anybody to rule on the families who paid for one.

Gallup sets the 70% of 2013 beside the 31% of 2026. Thirty-nine points in thirteen years. A reading that moves that far that fast cannot hold a child’s whole standing, and any parent who leaned on it can see that now. In one house the degree was supposed to give a daughter some safety. In another it was meant to settle for good that a son would be respected by the people who count.

Three · Where the ground is

An apostle with the training and two without it

From prison, Paul wrote to the church at Philippi and listed what he once had to show for himself (Philippians 3:4–6). He was a Pharisee, blameless by the measure of the law. Elsewhere he tells a crowd that he was brought up in Jerusalem and educated at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). Paul calls the list gain. Nobody in either passage calls the schooling worthless.

“But whatever gain I had,” Paul goes on, “I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.” He counts “everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” and he does it as a man with schooling and standing to give up (Philippians 3:7–8). For his place before God he trusted neither one. He wanted to be found in Christ with “the righteousness from God that depends on faith” (Philippians 3:9).

Luke tells what happened the morning after Peter and John, two fishermen from Galilee, were arrested at the temple (Acts 4:3–7). The council that gathered in Jerusalem asked them, “By what power or by what name did you do this?” That council included scribes, men whose work was the law. Luke reports what the council saw, that the two were “uneducated, common men,” and what it concluded, that “they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).

Whoever is glad, and whoever is afraid

“What do you have that you did not receive?” Paul asks the church at Corinth (1 Corinthians 4:7). In Corinth one believer said “I follow Paul” and another “I follow Apollos” (1 Corinthians 1:12). Paul aimed his question at people who kept score. Paul’s question lands on the graduate proud of his diploma and on the man proud of having had no need for one. Each received a mind from God and a stretch of years in which somebody taught him something.

Solomon writes in Psalm 127 that “unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain” and that children are “a heritage from the LORD” (Psalm 127:1, 3). The psalm has no scolding for a father who saved for tuition. Paul tells the Colossians that in Christ are hidden “all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:3). Christ is offered on the same terms to a child with a doctorate and to a child who did not enroll. Both kinds of family sit in the same pews. A pastor has conducted funerals for members from both kinds, and the older people in the congregation have watched how their children turned out.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Two of the five jobs belong to parents, and the other three are for anybody who felt something when the number came up.

1. 01

   Ask your child what a degree is for, and write down the answer.

   Sit down with the teenager or young adult in your house and ask what a college education is supposed to do for him. Take notes on his words and keep your own opinions out of the first twenty minutes. Proverbs 20:5 says that “the purpose in a man’s heart is like deep water, but a man of understanding will draw it out.”

2. 02

   Read Luke 18:9–14 before Sunday, then name your first reaction to the number.

   Jesus told the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector to people who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated others with contempt. The Pharisee thanks God that he is not like other men. Ask whether your first reaction to the Gallup number sounded like him, and then tell a man from your church what you found.

3. 03

   Get the loan balance in writing.

   If a loan is yours or your child’s, call the servicer or the school’s financial aid office and ask for the current balance and the monthly payment on paper. Read the statement with your spouse the same day. Proverbs 27:23 says, “Know well the condition of your flocks, and give attention to your herds.”

4. 04

   Ask an older couple at church what they would choose again.

   Invite a couple whose children are grown to a meal and ask what they paid for and what they would choose again. Your pastor can tell you which couples to ask. Proverbs 15:22 says that “without counsel plans fail, but with many advisers they succeed.”

5. 05

   Open Philippians 3:4–11 with whoever lives in your house.

   Read the passage through, the youngest included. Ask them what they would put on a list of reasons to be proud. Close by thanking God for the one thing on Paul’s list that nobody at the table earned, the righteousness that comes through faith in Christ.