The American Association of Univeristy Professors has published a public opinion survey on American people’s attitudes towards higher education, academic freedom, and tenure. There are several notable findings, but in general, the results indicate that people support tenure and academic freedom, but with certain limits:

In terms of age, people appear to lose confidence in academe as they age -- more than half of Americans aged 18-34 have “a lot of confidence” in higher education, but only 26.8 percent of those 65 and over feel that way. Politically, liberals (50.5 percent) are more likely to have a strong confidence level in higher education than are moderates (42.2 percent) or conservatives (30.5 percent). . . .

When Americans were asked to identify the top problem facing higher education today, college costs was a runaway winner, at 42.8 percent. It was followed by binge drinking (17 percent), low educational standards (10.2 percent), political bias (8.2 percent) and crime on campus (6.5 percent).

Other findings that I found interesting: 63% of respondents strongly or somewhat agreed that “public universities should be able to dismiss professors who join radical political organizations like the Communist Party,” which clearly violates a core principle of tenure. On the other hand, 79.4% strongly or somewhat disagree that “the government should control what gets taught in the college classroom.”

In other words and probably not that surprising, the American public has rather contradictory ideas about tenure and acacemic freedom -- they generally support them, but not when it comes to professors who express views and engage in activities that may be considered “un-American.”

I suppose that within the context of Americans having contradictory attitudes towards different issues, the results of this particular survey are not that surprising.