Americans Think STEM Education Deserves Higher Priority
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine is in the process of creating a national call to action to improve science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and is seeking public stakeholder feedback. According to the results of a recently-commissioned public opinion survey, a strong majority of Americans believe it is important to give higher priority to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. When asked whether they agreed or disagreed that the federal government should assign higher priority to improving STEM education, 84% said they strongly or somewhat agreed. This number is up from 69% in January 2017, possibly indicating a rising public value for quality STEM education.
Over the past decade, and particularly over the past year, reliable Internet has become increasingly essential to education. In August 2020, Research!America asked Americans how concerned they were that around 14% of children ages 3-18 did not have home Internet access. Sixty-four percent were very or somewhat concerned about this statistic. When we asked in January 2021 what priority participants would assign to ensuring universal broadband access, more than three-quarters said it should be a medium priority or higher, and more than half said it should be an urgent or high priority.
Check out our Public Opinion Polls page to see the full results from the survey.