A new Pew Research Center poll released Monday revealed that a majority of Republicans think that colleges have a negative impact on the country. Fifty-eight percent of Republicans now say that colleges "are having a negative effect on the way things are going in the country," while just 36 percent think colleges positively affect the country, Pew reported.
This marks a drastic shift from just two years ago in 2015, when a majority of Republicans (54 percent) rated universities' effect as positive and just 37 percent said that it was negative. While younger Republicans still think more positively of colleges' impact than older Republicans, the poll found that positive views of colleges among Republicans under the age of 50 sunk by 21 percentage points from 2015 to 2017.
Democrats, on the other hand, continue to overwhelmingly view colleges' impact as positive. Seventy-two percent say that colleges are good for the country, while just 19 percent say they're bad. On the whole, the majority of the public (55 percent) say colleges have a positive impact on the U.S.
The poll was taken by phone from June 8-18 among 2,504 adults. Its overall margin of error is plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.