A better name might be the “Poison Ivy League”

Good news: A new poll taken of 2,000 registered voters in June 2025 has found that the reputation of the Ivy League universities continues to decline, and has now dropped so much that almost half of those polled had no trust at all in these institutions.

A new poll by the Manhattan Institute found that only 15 percent of voters have a great deal of trust in the elite universities, while 46 percent have little to no trust at all.

Most of those polled said they want to see reforms such as the elimination of diversity, equity, and inclusion and race-based admissions and programs. Additionally, 64 percent “support requiring universities to advance truth over ideology by enforcing rigorous academic standards, controlling for academic fraud, requiring preregistration of scientific studies, and basing decisions on merit,” the poll found.

You can read the poll itself here. Though it covers many other major institutions, such as Congress, big business, the Presidency, public colleges and universities, it is this line item shown in the figure below that I think that stands out most starkly.


Click for original figure.

Only 15% of the population has a great deal of trust in the quality of an Ivy League education. More significantly, 46% of the population have either “not much” trust or trust these colleges “not at all.”

These numbers are somewhat shocking, considering that only a decade or so ago these colleges were routinely held in high esteem by almost everyone.

In other words, the Ivy League has destroyed the brand it had built up over almost three centuries, whereby these schools were seen as excellent incubators of critical thought and sophisticated knowledge. That brand is now gone, and has been replaced with a reputation that sees these colleges as leftist indoctrination centers promoting racist Marxist philosophies that are hostile to everything America stands for.

Whether this poll really indicates a significant shift depends on the answers to two key questions. First, will these numbers soon reflect a decline in the demand to attend these schools? It should, but it is hard to say whether it will. In a poll people might express these feelings, but when offered a chance to attend these schools those feelings might still turn out to be shallow.

There are indications however that the demand to attend the Ivy League is slipping, based on recent application numbers. Nonetheless, those same numbers still show that the high demand to attend these schools continues.

The second question is more important. Are employers now less willing to hire Ivy League graduates for elite job positions? In the past such positions always went first to these graduates, almost automatically. Employers would assume the degree meant the person he or she was hiring was guaranteed to be a highly qualified applicant.

Now however it appears employers are beginning to ask hard questions about Ivy League graduates, and are no longer hiring such graduates blindly. It seems too many come out of these schools without the required skills to actually work in the real world. More important, poisoned by the false rhetoric of DEI and Marxist oppression theory pushed by these colleges, Ivy League graduates too often become problem-childs focused more on political activism than their work, thus damaging morale across the entire work force.

The college graduates the Ivy League has been producing

It is this second question on which the real change hinges. If it no longer becomes advantageous — or becomes even detrimental — to have an Ivy League degree, then parents and high school students will no longer have any incentive to go there. They will pick other schools, recognizing that employers will view them will less skepticism.

The Ivy League will then be forced either to change their teaching culture drastically — and demonstrate those changes forcibly and publicly — or they will simply die.

Right now it appears that none of the Ivy League schools seem eager or even willing to change, which is all the more reason for employers to stop hiring their graduates. It is also a reason for federal and state governments to cut off all aid to these poisoned institutions. Whether such actions will finally force them to change however remains unknown.

The next few years will tell the tale.