AUSTIN — Most Texans believe student loan debt is a major problem and that state government needs to fund financial aid for all college students, according to a new poll released Tuesday.

"The most interesting thing that you see here is, on one hand, a set of very clear concerns by very high margins about student debt loan as a problem, and cost as an impediment for Texans who don't have a degree," said Jim Henson, a pollster and professor at the University of Texas at Austin who conducted the poll.

"People are concerned about those things not because they think there's something wrong about higher education, but because they still attach such importance" to getting a college degree, he added.

Most respondents said attaining a certificate, certification, or degree beyond high school was important to getting a better job, living a better life and being respected by others.

Nearly half of those polled, 49 percent, said Texas lawmakers don't funnel enough taxpayer money to higher education, and 9 in 10 said it was "very" or "somewhat important" for the state to fund financial aid for first-time students from low-income families seeking a college degree.

Almost the same percentage, 91 percent, said it was "very" or "somewhat important" for the state to fund financial aid for first-time students from middle-income families.

The important of keeping student debt low among the respondents was unsurprising if you take the poll's other results in context. Even though the majority of respondents who had attended at least some college said they had less than $10,000 in debt, most polled — nearly 4 in 5 — said they thought student debt was a "major problem."

Henson and colleague Joshua Blank performed the poll on behalf of Western Governors University, a private, nonprofit institution offering degrees online with state-affiliated schools in six states. This is the second poll the team has undertaken for WGU, but the duo is also known for performing political polls at UT.

Henson said they didn't ask respondents to identify a political affiliation, however, because they wanted the poll to remain nonpartisan.

"We were pretty interested in not placing this in a partisan context," said Henson. "We were interested in attitudes about higher education but without automatically having people retreat to the terms of partisan context."

More than 800 Texans completed the survey by cell or landline telephone between Sept. 6 and 16. It has an error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percent, meaning results can vary by that much in either direction.