Polls have shown that voters are increasingly divided by education level and angry about the economy, even as college costs ease.

This “degree division” is now a defining feature of American politics. It comes at a time when getting a degree remains among the surest paths to higher income and when the costs of getting on it are falling. But many don’t seem to notice.

The net costs students pay for four-year degrees have been falling for years, College data performances. When adjusted for inflation, in-state students now pay an average of $2,480 in tuition and fees at public four-year colleges this academic year, down 43 percent from a peak of $4,340 in 2012-13. At more expensive private four-year institutions, the net tuition and fees students pay fell 15 percent to $16,510 from a peak of $19,330 in 2006-07.

State and local government funding per student has increased or held steady since 2012, the data show, helping keep costs down. And institutional grant aid increased by an inflation-adjusted $19.6 billion between the 2013-14 and 2023-24 school years. However, only a quarter of adults believe that a college degree is essential to getting a high-paying job, a Pew poll this year it was found, and nearly half say it’s less important today than it was two decades ago.

Many people feel “that they are not getting enough back, that a college education is not worth enough,” said Paul Peterson, professor of education policy and government at Harvard University. “But this is contradicted by the data. The data says that a college education is worth more than ever before.”

The dissonance shows how higher education has become another part of the economy where the vibes are worse than the numbers might suggest — and risks exacerbating Democrats’ losses with working-class voters.

People without a college degree leaned Democratic in 2008, right exit polls. But this year, 63 percent supported President-elect Donald Trump, NBC News exit polls found. While he and Vice President Kamala Harris courted working-class voters, those with a high school education or less were more likely to voice economic concerns and trust Trump to address them. Voters who said inflation caused them serious hardship supported it 74 percent of the time.

The gender division of the electorate it is also reflected in college enrollments. Men made up just 42 percent of students on four-year campuses in 2022, down from 47 percent in 2011, Pew researchers found last year. White men without a college degree were among Trump’s strongest supporters.

There are many reasons why improvements in college affordability may not be taking hold on a large scale.

Median inflation-adjusted earnings for 25- to 34-year-olds without a college degree have risen over the past decade, Pew found, but the wage gap has not narrowed because college graduates’ wages have also risen. The gulf is wide: In 2022, bachelor’s degree holders made 59% more on average than those with only high school, according to National Center for Education Statistics.

“We have an economy where if you have a higher level of education, you’re almost recession-proof and inflation-proof,” said Andrew Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Economic Studies. Inflation disproportionately squeezes lower-income households, which spend more of their income on necessities, Dallas Federal Reserve Bank researchers found last year.

Given other budget pressures — from childcare TO car insurance — College costs simply may not have dropped enough to matter. They are still “a real burden for a lot of students,” said Robin Isserles, a sociology professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City, where Trump has been gaining ground. Voters in Staten Island and Long Island’s Nassau County, for example, supported him by larger margins in this election than they did four years ago.

For many lower-income households, “even relatively inexpensive tuition is more than they can handle,” Isserles said. But she speculates that the broader political realignment “isn’t about inflation right now.”

“I’ve always taught students on the economic edge,” she said, many of whom have long struggled to balance work and school, even when they know it will pay off.

Ashley Koning, who directs the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at Rutgers University, said she was shocked by the election results in her home state of New Jersey, which Harris won by the narrowest Democratic margin since 1992.

“I mean, gosh, now we’re labeled as a potential swing state,” Koning said. Something else also surprised her: in the pre-elections POLL65% of New Jersey residents reported difficulty affording education.

It’s true that tuition and fees for full-time students have risen on both public and private campuses, according to the College Board. And four-year peers in blue and purple states, including New Jersey, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — where Republicans have also made inroads this year — were posting some of the steepest tuition in the country.

But relatively few students bear those full sticker prices. A 2022 Sallie Mae study found that applicants are often not well-versed in the financial aid process, and only 18 percent were aware that many students end up paying much less than the schools’ stated tuition.

Last year the federal financial aid disaster probably didn’t help matters, with months of delays and processing errors confusing students’ enrollment plans and causing some administrators to raise alarms about incoming classes with fewer aid recipients and less ethnic diversity. While the Biden-Harris administration’s student loan forgiveness efforts have made a difference for many, years of legal wrangling have created uncertainty about how much student debt will ultimately be.

Even so, at Koning’s own university, tuition and fees at the main New Brunswick campus are down 5 percent from five years ago, after adjusting for inflation, to $17,930 for the current school year. And that’s before financial aid that lowers or even eliminates many students’ bills, with the school estimating that more than 70 percent of New Brunswick students received at least some aid in 2022-2023.

Koning said he understands Americans’ shock over higher education or any other cost of living. In her surveys, 85 percent of respondents said the economy was “very important,” and people with a high school or college education were much more likely to say the economy was getting worse.

It is not. while inflation has increased last month when voters cast their ballots, the economy remains strong. A long-anticipated recession did not materialize, and stock markets rallied both before and after after election day. Employers are still hiring even if the job market cools, retail sales look solid going on vacation and wage gains continue to outpace inflation.

Actually, robust wage growth in blue-collar fields it’s a key reason many lower-income people have dropped out of college. At the same time, several employers are elimination of degree requirements for salaried roles that once required them.

Enrollment declined at institutions serving lower-income students, particularly community colleges, which saw a 12.3 percent drop between fall 2019 and fall 2022, according to the College Board. That period overlaps with the pandemic, when labor shortages have hit a number of industries, forcing employers to raise wages. The National Student Clearinghouse also found significant declines at four-year colleges with high shares of lower-income students in recent years.

In New Hampshire, which Harris won by a smaller margin than Joe Biden won in 2020, Smith said he wasn’t surprised to see less-educated voters embrace Trump. Cost-of-living issues came up repeatedly in his polls, but unlike in New Jersey, education spending did not.

“It’s not as much of a day-to-day problem,” he said.

Isserles said the cultural impact of earning a degree — whether from an elite university or community college and regardless of its cost — could exacerbate divisions. Students in her classes discuss political issues and apply critical thinking skills in ways they might not in the workforce.

“More education can lead to a different kind of political sensitivity,” she said, noting an Ecuadorian American student she taught this year who was at odds with her more conservative relatives on immigration.

In any case, Isserles added, “We had a lot more students who seemed more invested in this election than I remember.”