Great Expectations: How the Public and Parents—White, African American and Hispanic— View Higher Education

Great Expectations was a survey that the Public Agenda organization conducted to probe the public’s attitudes and opinions about higher education. This survey was unique in selectively oversampling to reach a group most interested in higher education: parents of high school students. Slightly over 1,000 respondents were drawn from the general public. In addition, the survey oversampled 201 white parents, 202 African American parents and 202 Hispanic parents in order to be able to distinguish these parents’ views about higher education from each other. As a result of the findings made possible by this oversampling, Great Expectations laid to rest the myth that parents within minority groups do not value higher education as highly as the general public.