Signals We’re Watching · 02
What happens if distrust becomes a defining condition of public life?
Signal
Americans’ confidence in major institutions is near its lowest level in more than four decades. In 2026, just 27% expressed high confidence across 14 major institutions, and 12 of the 14 were at or near their historical lows.
Source: Gallup, 2026
So what?
Community colleges depend on something that is becoming increasingly scarce: the willingness to believe that an institution is acting in the public interest. We tend to think about declining trust as a political or civic problem, separate from the work of a college. But what happens if distrust becomes a defining condition of public life? Students may arrive skeptical not only of government and media, but of expertise, credentials, institutions, and the people who claim authority within them. Perhaps the question for community colleges is no longer simply how to earn the public’s trust. It is what role a college should play in a society that is losing the capacity to trust institutions at all.