Talk Elections

http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/rick-santorum-obama-wants-to-send-your-kids (http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/rick-santorum-obama-wants-to-send-your-kids)

Rick Santorum is working hard in Michigan to try and cast himself as the candidate of the working class. At a speech before a tea party audience here Saturday, he made his case by accusing President Obama of trying to turn America's youth into liberal drones by sending them to college. The idea was pretty well received by the crowd here at a rally hosted by the Michigan branch of Americans For Prosperity.

"Not all folks are gifted the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands," Santorum began. "Some people have incredible gifts and want to work out there making things."

Then he went after the president's call for making college easier for Americans to attend.
"President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob," Santorum said as the crowd howled with laughter and applause. "There are good, decent men and women who work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren't taught by some liberal college professor."

Santorum said he knows the real reason Obama wants more Americans on college campuses.

"That's why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image," Santorum said to more applause. "I want to create jobs so people can remake their children into their image, not his."

A little bit elitist of Rick Santorum (BA MBA JD) to argue that it's wrong to encourage other people to go to college, no?

Uh... yeah. While I believe that a four year education is not the best for everyone, it is for about 90% of people; this is just pandering to those who didn't go to college.

But that last bit is just insane. Lots of conservatives went to college. Come on Rick, you're smarter than this. How on earth did these people support Gingrich for being an intellectual, anyway?

In what country does everyone go to college?

The fact that they supported Newt Gingrich as an intellectual doesn't speak volumes for their intelligence, frankly.

Nowhere. But lots of countries do better than the United States these days.

Actually, on the contrary, the US has the second-highest percentage of the population with a college degree in the world: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/edu_edu_att_ter-education-educational-attainment-tertiary

Yes, but if you look only at workers under 35, the US scores 12th.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0809/Obama-aims-to-lift-college-graduation-rates-but-his-tools-are-few

In other words, the US was in the lead on this issue for decades, but has faltered in the last 20-30 years.

EDITED: "under 45" corrected to "under 35"

Ah, that's not measuring the same thing.  That's measuring the percent of students already enrolled in college who graduate, not the percent of the population who graduate.  In fact, you'd expect that the countries with the least government effort to college educate everyone would score the highest on that metric, as they would be attracting the fewest people who aren't necessarily qualified to do the work.

Read the article. It's not saying what you think it's saying:

"Among today’s American 25- to 34-year olds, slightly more than 40 percent have associate’s degrees or higher, a tad higher than for their parents’ generation. But that rate places the US only 12th of the 36 countries in the College Board study."

For reference, for example, 55% of Canadians in the same age group have the equivalent of an associate's degree or higher.

No, it's actually not saying what you think it's saying.  Click on the slideshow.  For example, the third slide:


You don't need a college education to realize that's mathematically impossible under your interpretation.

So you interpret the sentence, ""Among today’s American 25- to 34-year olds, slightly more than 40 percent have associate’s degrees or higher" as meaning:
"Among those Americans aged 25-34 today who began an associate's degree or higher degree, slightly more than 40 percent completed that degree."

Rick basically insinuated, consistent with the bit posted above, on Beck the other day that universities are liberal indoctrination mills.  Listen to the following at around 33:50.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzGPfwBm22M#t=33m51s (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzGPfwBm22M#t=33m51s)

If that's the case, how did he manage to emerge from college and law school the "arch-conservative" he is?  Lots of blue avatars on this forum went through college--did you all bribe someone not to make you attend the required "Torture Till You Confess that Marx was Right" class?  As I recall, when Obama headed the Harvard Law Review, he actively recruited conservative colleagues to help him run and edit it and encouraged conservatives to contribute to it.  He was an Indoctrination Fail, or did he make all the real liberals there pretend, or something?

And where, from Obama's policy agenda, did Rick get the idea that he will make "all" kids to go to college?  And, besides, has Rick been talking to employers who complain that they need more skilled and better educated workers lately?

Just goes to show you how mere spitballing can make you a serious contender for a nomination these days.

No, that statistic is accurate, just totally unrelated to the study mentioned in the article.

Further qualification from the College Board:

•The United States, which led the world in high school completion rates
throughout the 20th century, ranked just 21st out of 27 advanced economies
in 2005.1
• We rank near the bottom of industrialized countries in graduation rates for
students once enrolled in college.2
• While we are still second among developing nations in the proportion of
workers over the age of 55 with an associate degree or higher, we drop to
number 11 among younger workers (ages 25-34).3

http://advocacy.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/09_0650_Commission_4pager__WEB_090115.pdf


So the US does badly on both fronts here: a low graduation rate for students who get into college, and a low percentage of workers under 35 who have at least an associate degree. There's obviously a connection between the two, and there are overlapping solutions (chiefly, I think, more and better community colleges, with more remedial programs, not to mention more high schools that prepare people for college).
But the US is definitely beginning to fall behind on the percentage of its population who have completed an associate's degree or higher.

I suspect if you adjusted it for race (made the other developed countries as black and brown as America, or vice versa), the US would be at or near the top of those rankings too.

Of course, this is all assuming that a college education is, per se, a universal good.  On the contrary, producing a large number of overqualified workers for available positions requiring less qualification and taking large numbers of people out of the labor force for several years both produce significant deadweight losses in the economy (as well as creating a major obstacle to upwards social mobility in the first case).

...I support Rick, and all, but this is stupid. I live in a family where almost no one went to college in my family.

Don't tell ME someone is a snob for wanting to go to college, when YOU went to Penn State University, and the University of Pittsburgh.

It's easy to say that college "doesn't matter" or "isn't THAT important" when you went to college.

Senator, you need to word things better.

More data on percentage with degrees, by age group, from the OECD:

http://www.higheredinfo.org/internationalcomparisons.php

You can see that the US was historically very strong in this category, well ahead of most of its OECD rivals. Those rivals played catchup -- and then kept going; in the US, the percentage with degree for those 25-34 is actually slightly lower than for those 45-54.

College is not for everybody, or even most folks for that matter. The evidence: 60% of college entrants do not go on to graduate.

To remain truly competitive, and ensure a college education still means something, we cannot dumb-down college the same way that high school has been dumbed down the past few decades. Doing so would NOT help new college entrants nor previous college graduates. It would actually help nobody other than faculties that want to bring in more revenue.

I am not necessarily advocating this, but one idea that is not the worst in the world is having the federal government subsidize college education for intelligent/high-GPA/high-SAT applicants from poor families assuming the students go into one of the STEM (science/technology/engineering/mathematics) fields and maintain a high GPA. That could potentially lead to positive spillover effects.

We have a considerable trend to over-credentialing in this country (and others).  To some degree, that's because in our desire to give every kid the opportunity to go to college, we've downplayed vocational education severely, so that even when it is possible for an 18-year old secondary school graduate to have learned the necessary skills to qualify for a skilled position, they usually haven't have the opportunity and thus must go on to tertiary education.

We need to get our secondary education system back to being useful, and in order to do that, we need to abandon the folly of one-curriculum-serves-all and return to having non-college track curricula being a respectable part of secondary education.

Yes, Rick, higher education, and learning more abstract concepts, and how to parse abstractions, and read more complex text, is very subversive to traditional American values. That is why the Founders were so great. They were suspicious of that kind of book learning, and just let God inspire them to write the founding documents, including that closet atheist Jefferson, and not so closeted atheist Franklin.

Just why is it that you can discern such obvious truths that escape those with lesser insight than yourself?  You have a gift.

Why didn't Rick just say that besides the lack of motivation in some, perhaps not all those out there on the Fruited Plain have the tools to benefit from college due to our failed secondary educational system or something?   Why do you  need to personalize things the way you do, dissing Obama as a "snob" because he believes in the benefits of higher education for more young people?  Rick, on a personal level, Obama is probably better liked than you are at the moment. Lashing out at him personally will merely diminish yourself. Deal with it.

And is this one of the reasons why GOP performance among the more educated is tanking - the anti-intellectual tone of chaps like yourself? Hey Rick, do you think the theory of evolution is fundamentally flawed, resting on thin to no evidence, just like global warming, concocted by a bunch of those darn eggheads working 24/7 to sever America from its glorious?  Just asking.

Santorum's position is correct, but his reasoning is dumb.

College shouldn't be the requirement for a half-decent job that its become. High schools need to become less systematic and more relevant. There should be an option for immediate career paths for HS freshman.  It would reduce the dropout rate, be overall less expensive than HS + CC funding, and give us a stronger work force.

This is something else to consider.

If everybody had a college degree, are we going to have college graduates who are janitors? College graduates working the front-lines at Target? We already have quite a few who work at Starbucks...

In a more perfect world, with more resources, or if you can afford it, a college degree is more about enriching your whole life, and savoring more the stimuli your little senses perceive, and the joy of learning itself, and less about economics. I was fortunate enough to have that focus for my undergraduate time in college, rather than thinking about return on investment. But then I could afford to go to graduate school, well schools, so yes, we don't live in a more perfect world, because for most the economics do not accommodate that.

Perhaps we could get a workforce where being a janitor was a job rather than a career?  While it came out sounding very silly, Gingrich's proposal to have kids doing the bulk of the janitorial work at their schools made some sense because you don't need even a kindergarten diploma to do most janitorial tasks.

I'd say that college (including community college) is only partly about training people to do a specific job. It's also about improving peoples' capacities to do many different kinds of jobs.
One of the problems with specifically vocational kinds of training is that vocational skills do become obsolete rather quickly these days. Whatever level people reach in the education should be aimed at expanding their opportunities generally, even if they're also getting training for a specific occupation.



Just as an aside, Santorum used to think that promoting access to college was a good thing:

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/flashback-in-2006-rick-santorum-wanted-to-send-all-paians-to-college.php

While it's true that you don't even need to know how to read/write to do most janitorial tasks, it's also true that you have to have somebody to clean up facilities. We do not have machines that can do that task. It's an essential job in the sense that somebody has to do it if you want clean facilities. With that said, there is no great shame for some people in being a janitor for life. There are folks with an IQ of 70, for example, who could not do much else. It does not make them any less dignified than you or I. The question is this: Do we really want to dumb-down our education system to the point where people like that are being pushed through into college the same way they are, in many places, being pushed through high school today? The end result is they still end up as a janitor, a college education means nothing, and many resources were wasted in the process of getting them from point A to point B, so to speak. It would be government intervention run amok, if you ask me.

I question this, but I am admittedly unfamiliar with the subject. Yes, being an auto mechanic is different today versus forty years ago. But it is not that much different, is it? I would imagine auto mechanics who learned their trade forty years ago have updated their skills/knowledge on-the-job with the changes in automobiles. To give some other examples, I cannot imagine much changes with regards to learning the different specialties within construction (e.g., carpentry, electrical work, dealing with heavy machinery, etc.), or plumbing to give another example.

These are occupations that will always be around in our lifetime, and I suspect a lot of folks would be a lot happier learning one of these trades rather than being forced to attend college first.

The thing is, nobody ever said everyone has to go to college.  No one.  And no one ever said that labor jobs, and careers, that required no college are not important for everyone in society.  They are, and the people who work at such jobs have, as far as I'm concerned, just as much dignity, and are worthy of just as much respect, as everyone else.

The problem here is that Rick is claiming that Obama believes everyone should go to college, which isn't true to begin with.  He believes everyone who wants to go, and who can qualify, should have a chance to go.  Secondly, Rick constantly insinuates that universities and colleges are liberal indoctrination mills.   I've taught in colleges and universities full-time for twelve years, and for five years part-time before that, and I've had just as many conservative and/or Republican colleagues as I've had colleagues of other political persuasions.  The "liberal indoctrination" charge is bs, and Rick, who has been through as much college as he has, knows it's bs.    

This. Nobody's saying that everybody should have 2 or 4 years of college to be an auto mechanic. But they should have that opportunity.
There are interesting statistics out there that show that below-average students who come from richer-than-average families are more likely to go to college than kids in the top quartile in terms of test scores who come from poor families. In other words, there are actually lots of people out there who are clearly qualified to go to college, and don't go.

Folks, the British have a saying: "Horses for courses." It comes from the fact that certain horses run better on certain courses. Similarly, what is suitable for one person may not be suitable for another. There is no one-size-fits-all solution for everybody. For better or worse, market forces pick horses for courses. Let the markets operate, and we will be more competitive, and resources will be allocated more efficiently, than any entity could possibly hope to achieve via planning/manipulation.

In all fairness, most professors of a conservative persuasion are less likely to openly voice their opinions compared to their liberal brethren, especially outside of economics/business. At least at most colleges, anyway. I cannot imagine disputing that. But I do agree it is a bit much to charge "liberal indoctrination." I like to think that most folks in college are able to see bias when it rears its head. Perhaps I am wrong.

I dispute it.  I know plenty of conservative faculty in departments of history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, religious studies, certainly law, and many other fields outside of econ and business who have no difficulty expressing their views openly, inside and outside the classroom.  There are surely places where liberals are more vocal, but there are others where either conservatives are more vocal or there is a rough balance between them. 

It has nothing to do with his 'words'. This is what santorum (ba, mba, jd) truly believes in his heart of hearts.

And now, because I am widely known to unfairly persecute all santorum supporters, illl be infracting you 10 points for this, and all succeeding posts you make. ;)

Here' some data to support what I was saying, though I've seen more complete data out there.

College attendance by Parental Income Quartile and Child's Math Test Scores:

Top quartile for income
Top third, math test scores:  84% go to college
Middle third, math test scores: 59%
Bottom third, math test scores: 27%

Bottom quartile for income
Top third, math test scores: 68% go to college
Middle third, math test scores: 33%
Bottom third, math test scores: 15%

http://www.pewtrusts.org/uploadedFiles/wwwpewtrustsorg/Reports/Economic_Mobility/PEW_EM_Haskins%207.pdf

So students from well-off families of about average intellectual ability are almost as likely to go to college as students from poor families with above-average abilities. And average-ability kids from poor families are half as likely to go to college as average-ability kids from well-off families (and go to college at about the rate of the bottom-third of well-off kids).

College isn't for everyone, and we'd be crazy to insist that it was. But it's pretty clear that there are lots of kids out there who'd benefit from going to college who aren't getting the chance.

To sum up what I say below: market forces already determine a lot about who goes to college -- and they favor, not the smartest kids, but the ones with richer parents.
Conservatives used to say they believed in "equality of opportunity." This would be a good place to do something about that.

     Santorum had a worthwhile point in there, but then buried it with an anti-education tirade. Not too surprising.

Wow. The length of my 'point and laugh' post refuting politico's citing a phase from the victorians class system in defense of 'market forces' ensuring less affluent kids who perform well on tests go to college notably leds than wealthy kids who test similarly well would take pages to fully squeeze out every drop of foolishness in that post. Instead I'll just leave it with this apt summary:

Let's just say this is exactly the type of post one would expect from someone who (supposedly) works in finance and only a few months ago openly adnitted to envying the tycoons his bosses work for who rack up trophy wives with their vast wealth.

This--about the only disciplines where I haven't met or don't know of conservative or right-leaning professors of some description are those that are in basic bent or expectation essentially postmodern, like gender studies. Even the English department at my university has some conservative Up-Western-Canon! old-guard folks.

I would think the real "snobs" would want a mass economy of poors to service the college-educated  elite.

If the signalling model of education (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_%28economics%29#A_basic_job-market_signalling_model) is at all accurate, then it's possible that at least some types of education can have negative externalities.

Imagine the (highly unlikely) world where college education provides nothing of value, but serves as a way for employers to distinguish between the (probably) smart and hard-working and those who (probably) are not. Then college graduates will earn more than non-graduates because of this and cohort effects, not because college teaches them anything. Now, suppose you introduce subsidies for college. Since the credibility of a signal depends on its cost, this just means that students have to spend more time and money on education to get the same signal. In that case, subsidies are completely wasteful. Signalling almost certainly isn't the entire reason for college, but to the degree it is relevant it reduces the social benefit of incentivising people to go there.

The liberal indoctrination charge is correct, it's just subtler than the way liberals portray our belief in its existence.

It's in the textbooks that are selected for one.  The textbooks all mention climate change as a fact and something to consider for the future.  We got a book by Michael Ignatius on ethics that basically condemned every type of war and sanction (economic or otherwise).  One of my professors put a test question that said:

The No Child Left Behind Act from President Bush was unfunded.  If President Obama fully funds it like he has claimed he would, it would achieve the goals it was created to accomplish.  True or False.

Hint...the correct answer is "true".

My indian american history class began with the teacher showing us her favorite student's project from her class the prior semester...a video that accused President Bush of 9/11.

A not so subtle example...
When I was in biology, our professor began to talk about evolution.  He then began to show us what he called "proof" over and over and over.  He would show us something and then say.  "Still not convinced" and then he would show us another example.

And there is more

Reading the above post reminds how f[Inks]ed up this country is; that 'belief' in climate change and evolution are considered 'liberal' opinions.

Perhaps, others consider it crazy that we've allowed these fraudulent theories to infect our country and twist our fellow citizens' minds.

People like nhmagic are the reason this country is circling the drain.

Conservative here - with a college degree.

Santorum speaks my feelings strongly. Something like what - 25 percent of people finish with a degree? Most people don't want to go and see no need to rack up a ton of debt when they would prefer to do something else.

Forcing everyone to go to college just makes it grades 13 through 16.

People should be able to do well and make a success of themselves irrespective as to whether they have a college degree.

I had a few, but they were few and far between.

Only 5 percent of college professors are registered republicans. That's not balance, that is liberal indoctrination at it's finest.

Please tell me you're a self-parody or something.

This is why liberals believe that there is 'balance'. They really don't understand what a conservative is and wouldn't understand what a conservative was even if one came up and bit them.

Another example, not college but high school.  While leading our class in the pledge of allegiance the day after Bush won reelection, our english teacher said "Justice for some".  Also in this class, he lectured us about the plight of the family in the book and their justified move towards socialism.

Some more "great" reading: Howard Zinn, Nudge (by none other than Cass Sunstein of the Obama admin)...

The guest speakers in my classes have always been democrat politicians, campaign reps, union reps, etc.

And there's more.

It doesn't sound like you have particularly good teachers. There is, at the high school level and lower, something of a reactive nationalist bias in typical curricula, but that sounds like overcorrection to me.

A political belief system that is hostile and dismissive to rational thinking and empirical evidence/facts is a failure. Its only strength will be in numbers.

Is it any surprise conservatism and religion are so linked together?

Yes, actually, if you know anything about religion.

The better word in this context is "fundamentalism" rather than religion.

And of course that isn't a surprise.

I find it kind of hilarious that azmagic is appalled about being taught about evolution in a biology class. If he didn't want to learn biology, maybe he shouldn't have taken that class.

Not appalled, I expected it.  And the class was required - well at least a general science, and it fit the bill at the time I needed it.

Additionally, it was the manner in which he presented it - as something to convert nonbelievers.

Actually, our history books in high school had glowing profiles of Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, while taking the time to dispute Reagan's accomplishments.  Also, we were taught how the Indian tribes practiced a primitive form of socialism - when in actuality it was a couple tribes and not all of them.

The best teachers I have had were actually the ones teaching practical, useful topics - home ec, financial management (for the masters), human resources management, local govt admin, etc.  If you're implying that I got a slate of liberal teachers throughout my life simply as a coincidence, I would disagree.

There are several things that occur both intentionally and unintentionally in college that mold students into leftists. 

First, groupthink and peer pressure.  One person has a cause and proseletyzes other students about it getting people to shake their heads in agreement (metaphorically) and those students join the cause becoming zealots themselves.  Professors can also lead students to come to a certain conclusion and reward (through a praising complement).  As other students see this, they also crave being intellectually valued by their instructor. 

Second, the immorality and sensuality that comes as part of the college experience.  The constant partying and pressure to identify yourself to the world is encouraged.  Who wants to be just one of 60,000 (or whatever the campus size is)?  So, you have your gender groups and your sexuality groups and your race groups out and about encouraging people to explore themselves in a sensual or narcissistic manner. 

Third, the professors themselves are liberal and want to get people to vote democrat.  And its that simple.  Curriculum is created in order to foster this behavior.  Books are selected for this purpose.  Some, like my American Indian class teacher, threatened bad grades to students who disagreed with her viewpoints.

Oh, well, that isn't what I meant. What were you taught about the settling, Thanksgiving, the Revolution, the expansion, the transition to being an imperial power?


It might be a function of your local school system. I also have to ask if you're perceiving them as liberal relative to yourself or relative to some more objective standard (if such a thing is possible). I perceive a lot of people and things as rightist relative to myself that are probably not absolutely so.


I'm not going to dispute this in the case of many colleges, but it does depend on where you go.


This happens everywhere, though.


There are all sorts even among professors. Good professors either don't do this or take time to reward intellectually stimulating dissent as well.


I won't dispute this either, though it's easier than you seem to think to avoid that sort of environment if one is willing to actually politely assert oneself. I know I've been successful in doing so.


I will dispute that that's what such groups, with the exception of some of the dodgier third-wave feminist groups, are there to do.


Voting democrat is to be expected in this country since voting is by definition a democratic act (even if only superficially). If you mean voting Democratic, it may be instructive to look at the education system and the function it serves in society and try to divine why it might be best-served by adhering to and supporting soft leftism as opposed to those parts of the political spectrum that actively want to dismantle it. I'd also like to know what sort of curriculum and books you'd like to see that would be so different.

And textbooks in Economics courses all mention communism as a flawed economic theory that should be disregarded. Textbooks regarding medicine all mention vaccines as successful and that everyone should be inoculated. And university courses universally disregard the widely held belief that a Jewish cabal is running everything.

Facts are facts. It doesn't qualify as "bias" for universities to disregard conspiracy theories.


I suppose you think that universities should have a substantial number of faculty favouring the Hindu conception of reincarnation, or the pagan conception that Earth is carried on the back of giant turtle?

Oh wait I forgot, it's only bias when Christian fundamentalism is absent from University. It doesn't constitute bias for Hindu or Pagan fundamentalism to be disregarded.

Because Republicans care about something outside of themselves? ;)

Religion and caring about something outside of oneself are entirely independent traits.

The first three (settling, Thanksgiving and Revolution) were apolitical.  The expansion and transition to an imperial power was portrayed in a negative light.

I have been in multiple school systems and home schooled for 1 year (2nd grade).  Indiana, Arizona - went to ASU and to UNH.  Regardless of how I perceive my teachers - education should be apolitical or give arguments for both sides of a political issue.

Groupthink and peer pressure are magnified in college beyond any other place or institution.  The majority of professors are liberal and rarely give credit to intellectual dissent.  In fact, they usually grade those individuals worse - unless, a conservative has so "nuanced" their views as to make them acceptable.

I also have been able to assert myself; however, let's be honest, most people are lemmings and don't do that.  Watch those Penn and Teller videos and how easily they build a group of environmentalists to ban water.

When I wrote the words "vote democrat", I used conservative slang that means voting for the democratic party.  As far as curriculum, I'd like to see a much greater focus on math and education that makes individuals successful as human beings.  Life skills and health should get much greater emphasis.  Arts and music programs should be scuttled - we have the internet and college for individuals to learn that at their own cost.  I'd like to see history taught with competing perspectives and absolutely no hint to how teachers feel about either perspective.  I'd like diversity and identity training to be eliminated - actually watch this video (i hate the title though - its more teachers brainwashing children): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZIwZ2cljq4

It's possible that what you perceive as apolitical attitudes towards the early period are in fact intensely political. I know that was the case for me. Now I'm reasonably sure it's impossible to not be political somehow or other about those subjects.


Ah, yes, the 'aww shucks, learning's for gettin' jobs!' view of pedagogy. I'm sorry, but it's going to be hard for me to take this conversation seriously from now on.


I find the video completely unobjectionable. Eliminated to be replaced with what?

College classes don't make people liberal, the rather libertine social environment does.

Indeed; most of the politicized classes I've had have been highly critical of 'liberalism' as a political project and sociopolitical concept.

Well, that period is probably political to you now with the tea party and all, but I highly doubt you found that period to be very political at all as a student.  If you found it political, then its likely that you disliked the way our country was founded, disliked what it stands for and wanted it to be changed.

First, I didn't say its just for getting a job, but I do think lower education is meant for an individual to have success in life - it is not for government fetishes of what an education should be.  Higher education, however, can offer what it wants.  Second, your smug comment is a typical response of an elite, holier than though, narcissistic leftist.

On the video - I find it amazing that you find it unobjectionable.  It is an absolute demonstration of what we've been talking about in the thread.  The teachers and admin sit around in a room and plot this.  The kids are six years old and if that's what you believe a quality education is, then you are sadly mistaken.

Yeah, nhazmagick is right you know. The entire point of teaching undergraduates is to corrupt them into voting for the Left, however defined. There is no other reason. It's also absolutely and utterly successful over the longterm.

Children don't find much of anything political, because they are children. That doesn't mean it's not. By the time I was in middle school I was definitely conscious of the fact that I was being taught a national myth--granted, one of the better ones out there.


As your attitude is typical of ignorant, stick-in-the-mud, internalized modernist-materialist reactionary politics. Success in life by definition includes things like art and music. A life without these things is no sort of way of being. I'm also really not sure how anything that I said indicates narcissism even within the internal logic of ignorant, stick-in-the-mud, internalized modernist-materialized reactionary politics, but whatever.


Six is admittedly a bit young. I would start explaining this sort of thing, preferably without involving sex and with a primary focus on the affective and performative aspects, around eight or nine in ideal circumstances. I find it not worth getting upset about because considering the extent to which children's perceptions are abused by the expected mockery of pageantry in the old orrery, it's understandable that somewhat heavy-handed crisis measures should be introduced. More objectionable than any questions of proper age targeting, however, are the comments on the video, which are by and large vile.

I dunno - I think at the very least a janitor should be able to tell that "Ammonia" isn't spelled the same as "Bleach."

That's why I said most tasks, not all. :P  It isn't as if janitors need to have an Associate's degree in Sanitation Science (A.S.S.) that includes courses in how the chemistry of various cleaning supplies makes them best suited for various types of grime.

hopefully, this troll will make himself useful tomorrow in MI so that we can flush him and the rest of the current GOP field down the toliet.

That Al, is five death points for excessive hyperbole. And you should get another 3 points for having too much fun.

Realisticidealist has found the main point of why college makes people more liberal. It's mostly not because some professor rams socialism down your throat (as some occasionally do, but I doubt that changes too many people's minds anyway). It's because of the campus environment where binge drinking is nearly ubiquitous and condoms are handed out that say things like "Love is Never Wrong", and the university residential housing staff is blatantly cheerleading liberal social causes. That's why college makes people liberals, folks. It's much more from that than it is from some random sociology professor.

Booze and sex makes one into a "liberal?"  Anyway, I have seen a couple of studies that based on self reports, conservative men are more sexually active and aggressive than liberal ones, FWIW.

College seems not to make people more secular, FWIW:

http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/02/studies-refute-santorums-claim-that-attending-college-reduces-religiosity.php?ref=fpblg

If college works as it's supposed to, it encourages people to ask more questions, and to think more critically. That doesn't guarantee that it makes people more liberal.

You don't stand, you seiza.

I can't stand this man. Santorum is the snob.

I would argue that university steers people away from critical thinking. There's very little reward for questioning a prof and when folks have scholarships on the line - considerable pressure to conform with the prof. Given the fact that you have a 10-1 chance of getting a democrat vs republican - it's not hard to guess which way people end up going.

That study btw argues that those who do not attend college show a steeper decline.

Do I really have to explain why this doesn't actually prove Santorum's point is wrong?

Say folks who go to college and folks who do not go to college have scores of 85 and 25 respectively - before they go.

Then when they leave - the college folks score 10 and the folks who do not go to college score 65, who had the greater absolute decline?

Who's decline is far more significant? ;)

Statistics are fun things - btw. The rate of change of religiousity says nothing about where that religiousity starts, nor does it even show anything other than the absolute decline is greater - rather than percentage wise.

As for the claim that a minority of those become more religious - I can totally believe this. This - however, doesn't speak for the majority. If 50 percent of the whole said that they became more religious, then yes, one could say that university was pushing people towards, rather than away from religion. But if the pool of folks going to university is not very religious - and a minority say that they become more religious - what happens to the other 75?

Even if what you're saying were true (and I don't believe for a minute that it is), and even if every course that students took in university was on a subject where the controversies neatly aligned with the Democratic-Republican, or conservative-liberal divide (and that's definitely not the case), wouldn't it also be true that hearing a new, less conservative, point of view from your professors -- and figuring out both how to write in support of that position, even though you didn't share it, and how to maintain your own convictions in the face of this new intellectual challenge -- would be wonderful training for your critical thinking skills?

But Santorum was citing this very study to show that he was right. And you'd have to agree that the study doesn't do that.

I should point out that I actually don't agree with the idea that college should be necessary or is even always desirable. There are plenty of people who are more suited to tech schools or on-the-job training, and there should be a greater diversity of options in higher education beyond the university format in general. I'm nevertheless a product of the academic class myself and am inclined to defend it from some of the sorts of specific accusations that have been going on in this thread.

maybe this could be an issue like taxes and spending cuts where they all try and outdo each other. Now that Santorum has come out against going to college, Newt Gingrich will up the ante and attack high school eduction. Then Ron Paul can come out and say that kids should just be thrown in a room with a book and let the free market decide. The one who comes out reading is the winner and the rest can go f--k themselves.

*notes that the above poster has a Carlyle quote in his signature*

*cackles for about five minutes*

Actually, that's the definition of encouraging liberal thought. And that's not a bad thing at all.

Case in point.
Only someone with as much education as yourself would be able to construct such an intracately compounded double ad hominem.

Oh, absolutely. It's just that it's perfectly possible, in my opinion, for that liberal process to lead individuals to become conservative. And that's OK, too.

I was trained in this aspect well before university. I did not receive comparable training at university wrt critical thinking. Ergo, my thesis that university does not prepare one to critically think, but rather instills one with the common knowledge of the age. This is in itself a service - it is more difficult to advance the current state of knowledge without an understanding of the present day.

As for Carlyle, I identify with him. He was an irascable malcontent romaticist, stuck in a profoundly unhappy marriage who struggled greatly with his faith, and in a materialist age.

I can count the fingers on no hands the number of times my professors actually referred to Carlyle.

Wow. This topic really came out of nowhere. And if a Presidential Candidate said that 14 years ago I would have said it is ridiculous. Not today.
College costs are rising way faster then anything else, even property taxes and medical expenses in the last few years seem to be expanding slower then college costs. Why?
Everyone feels they HAVE to go to college, and the demand for admissions is driving up the costs.
So does it make sense for college students and/or their parents rack up loans from $80 to $160 for college when they are pretty sure they may not need it for their careers?
My friend's son is now landscaping for a living, and is soooo pissed he has to pay off a $80K loan for something he didn't need. He felt he was pushed into an expensive school he wasn't sure he wanted to attend.
I have 2 daughters and plan to send them to college, and my wife and myself went to good private colleges. So I am not against college, but Rick's statement is so bold and profound in this new global economy we have, it shows that he has much more of a pulse of what is going on with the middle class then any of the other 3 GOP candidates.
I cringe every time I hear that companies have to hire foreign graduates because American college grads don't have the skills they need. This is a crock in my opinion. I think companies are just looking to pay less, and American kids need a bigger salary to pay off their school loans.
Does anyone really believe that if we flood the college campuses with students taking science and math that all these millions of new jobs we need will suddenly appear from outer space?
So this statement isn't about mocking college, it's about defending parents and kids who honestly feel they don't need it, and don't need to waste all that money, just out of guilt or keeping up with the Joneses.

Because everyone does need to go to college to have the best chance possible at a successful future. Obviously, there will be people out there capable of being a success without college, but these are very clearly the exception, and not the rule.

It genuinely bothers me that the GOP is continually going back to the same well of mocking education. Not the educational system, but the simple act of being educated. It's insane.

Telling. College education used to be inexpensive in America. Now it usually comes with a burden of debt about as big as that for a trailer.

Trailer? You live in Michigan. Can't you buy houses for a fraction of the cost?


Bill Gates says hi.


Bill Gates again says hi.


Education is useful. But there's this thing called 'marginal utility'.

One - even if education is helpful to everyone in some way - is it the most efficient thing for everyone? No. There are people who are better off for not having gone to college at all, let alone staying for a complete degree.

I realize it is a difficult thing - but you can do many things with 80k in your pocket - and that's what not getting a college degree will do for you.

Only 25 percent finish their degree, that is not going to change much, unless you change the quality of education in university, which also hurts the marginal utility. Making college grades 13-6 won't actually improve things at all.

What is going to happen - is you are going to see more people wash out - and fewer finish. Does this help the student? No. Does this help the school? For sure. They see enrollment go up - without the burden of having flunked out.

Not all go to college - and this is a good thing. Pushing everyone to go and then flunk out is a substantial negative to the student.

I wonder how different high school advisors would be if they worked like the stock market. You could put money behind a kid like you do with Intrade. I think that would be a much more enlightening thing to show the true value to actually lose if you make a wrong bet on a kid or steer a kid in the wrong direction.

This kind of talk would be inconceivable 20 years ago. Now Rick doesn't want our population to be educated, and if they are, they are snobs?

Believing that wanting 100% of our population going to college is undesirable does not equate to wanting 0% of our population to go to college.

There are snobs who think work that involves something other than brainpower is degrading.  I wouldn't say that either party has more or less snobs than the other.

And wanting everyone in the country to
"commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship"
is not the same thing as wanting 100% of our population to go to college. Santorum was fighting a straw man here.

Because dropping out of Harvard to start your own computer company is equivalent to jumping onto the job market with nothing but a high school diploma and no real plan for the future?

If 'college opens you up to the most possibilities', why is it that the wealthiest man is a college drop out? If that were in fact true- we would expect the wealthiest man to have went and finished college - not the case.

It may be true that college is beneficial - but certainly not for everyone, and it certainly doesn't 'open up to the best possibilities. Nonsense.

College is a long time in a period of your life that can be spent more productively than attending classes. That is if you want the absolute best outcome.

I'll change that to:

Every young person in america should commit to one year serving in the armed forces.

Is that policy so great now?

No. For one thing, the armed forces wouldn't like it one bit.

I said the exception and not the rule. Certainly there are those who did not go to college and wound up running successful businesses or having money-making ideas. But by and large, it is those with no college education that are poor; and it is those who have college education who are wealthy. There is a real correlation. A lucky few can buck the trend, but there is definitely a trend.

The people most strongly poised to capitalize on the kind of opportunities are those who graduate from college. Especially if that person aspires to be in the middle class, upper middle class, or upper class. Period.

Not entirely.  It used to be that there were good paying respectable jobs that could be had with just a secondary education.  There still could be if we didn't insist on making secondary education nothing more than a stepping stone to tertiary education.  Ideally, the vocational education found in community colleges and the like should be for those who decide to change careers or who wish to pick up additional skills beyond the basics.  There is zero reason why people who wish to enter the building trades, the mechanical trades, basic nursing (LPN level), secretarial/record keeping, cosmetology, and other vocations should be expected to go to tertiary education to pick up those skills.  Indeed, some places still have effective vocational education at the secondary level, but those are increasingly the exception.

When we expect that secondary education must prepare people who either by inclination or aptitude are unlikely to ever pursue a course of study at a four-year college, we add a needless burden on both secondary schools and secondary students.

No, you said that the ideal is a 4 year college education + degree. That's not the case. The ideal shows that there are more successful pathways out there, and that if what you want is the ideal - college is not for you.


This is a different argument. You are arguing that college is a hedge - it's a way to hedge your bets against poverty rather than opening up new opportunities for people.


Again, not true. See Bill Gates. The people most strongly poised to do so are not the people who went to college - that is time they could have been using to do real work.


Again, Bill Gates says hi. He shows you that it's not necessary to have a degree and that a degree is probably detrimental to achieving these ends.

As a hedge - maybe 10 years ago sure - but if you go and fail you'll be very far behind your peers who did not go. That's a big risk when you have a 50:50 chance of making it.

And because he had his head on straight - he left college when he wasn't getting the education that he needed to be successful. See - it works both ways. You argue he had his head on straight when he went - but I'm arguing he had his head on straight when he left.


So what you are saying is that college is not for talented people? Excellent argument.


Could, but does it lead to that outcome? If it's not working for the talented, why should we expect it to work for those who are less talented? Are we subjecting them to busywork that does nothing to contribute to their future well-being?


Hardly. When you are 80k in debt - you are in debt slavery as opposed to having the freedom to become an entrepreneur right out of the gate.


Ah, the sour grapes defense. So you concede that college provides no material benefit?


Aside from the odd serial killer, are you arguing that people who go to college are more moral than those who do not?


So I should be paying for other student's education? They didn't pay for mine and I had to make sacrifices along the way to get an education.


Nonsense - it provides a well-funded sinecure for your friends and buddies with the best pensions for life. The side goal is to provide an education that is contrary to what I believe on my own dime. What benefit do I derive from the public benefit? If there's no direct benefit then why am I paying for it?


Like in Germany? I see no evidence that universities are immune to either of these. Ever been to a university - do you see what they lavish on themselves in terms of facilities? As for demagoguery - I also see no evidence of this. Most demagogues, and the most effective ones were trained in university.


You live at a university? Take a walk around and look at all the stuff you can buy.



University perpetuates this mindset rather than prevents it. Open your eyes.


But it doesn't because it doesn't make the universities money. If the university was all about doing less with more - why are they charging 80k+ for what you could do for a buck fifty in late charges from the public library?

Why don't they permit a student to challenge an examination session in order to earn a degree? This way a student could study on his own time and still earn a degree, without having to pay the big bucks.


Nothing, except for the fact that he is now 20k in debt. Wouldn't it be better for an 18 year old to be self-aware before putting down the 20k and going to the apprenticeship in a skilled trade straight away? He's lost a year, and more than that in debt that he is going to have to pay off. This is a win for the system - they made 20k for providing exactly nothing, but the student feels cheated and ripped off.   


20k x the number of years that you went, and the time spent at university. That's a significant harm. College isn't cheap, especially not for those who pay for it and get nothing out of it.


True, but there are better ways to undertake that training than to fork out 20k per year to a university.


I teach high school. I beg to differ - I'd match our graduates up against any college graduates straight up. I attended a high school that did the same. There have been studies out that showed college graduates performing worse than their high school graduates after 4 years of college with a degree.


Bullsh**t. This is why folks get branded snobs. Try living out in the real world.


That is what going to college and dropping out does to you. Ask yourself - would I be where I am if I had 80k in the bank and no degree? If the answer is yes then you've wasted 4 years of your life. College doesn't have to just earn you back that 80k, it has to earn you back the time spent. This is how marginal utility works. With college being so expensive - it imposes a high marginal cost to anyone who attends.


True - but he still has the 80k in the bank, and is just 18.


And I've known people who spent that much on school and ended up working at McDonalds.


There are better ways to provide that education that do not involve 20k a year at a pop.


Funny you should say that. I've worked for them previous providing a very specialised service- teaching them the basics that college didn't provide for them so that they are equipped. Cost? Helluva lot less than 20k per. Benefit - they catch up to their peers whom they were behind and go on to be a success. It can be done, and it doesn't need to cost an arm and a leg.


I'm in K-12 education. I'm trying to have my students up to the standard that they need to be in order to progress and fix the damage from previous years.


You have kids? You ever raise any?


Yes, there are some. Open your eyes out to the real world again.


Isn't that how the system works now? Look at the universities again. Look at the students working to pay off their education all in the hopes of getting that one job...

We have ignored the question of snobbery itself. Intellectual snobbery is far more common in places in which education is rare. Economic snobbery is more common in places in which the rewards for work are unconscionably small and the reward for being born into the Right Family are unconscionably profuse. The worst snobs are ordinarily the middle-class people least secure about their economic or educational status --  the legal secretary as opposed to the attorney or the waitress. The typical snob has an ill-paying job with big expenses (like "professional" clothing) related to the work.

We have also failed to answer the question of what education is for -- basically preparation for leadership even if leadership comes with personal hardships (military service, parish priesthood) -- let alone teaching, accountancy, medicine, engineering, law, and most creative work... Truly-good education improves the people who get it. It might not be a valid alternative to forty years of matriculation in the School of Hard Knocks that increasingly becomes the norm in our profits-first, people-if-the-elites-get-sentimental economy, but by the time that one has forty years of experience in the School of Hard Knocks one is washed up no matter how wise one is.

Yes, Ben Kenobi, creative people would be wise to drop out of formal education when they can no longer derive anything from it. If one is Bert Bacharach and one can churn out one lucrative pop song after another one need not devote effort to compose dense counterpoint as found in Bach fugues and Beethoven's late sting quartets that the cultural snobs alone like. (Sure, I enjoy that music... but I also think that the artsy snobs vastly underrate Thomas Kincaid as they did Norman Rockwell because he appeals to "the wrong people").   

Education at its best allows people to learn from others' mistakes instead of repeating them. One of those mistakes is to put undue trust in economic elites like ours that see the rest of humanity as livestock at best and vermin at worst. Another, paradoxically, is snobbery.

I agree that Rockwell is underrated, but that's not why art snobs, speaking as one, hate Kincaid.

I just want to chime in that it would most likely be beneficial for the nation if we saw more undergraduates in the STEM (science/technology/engineering/mathematics) fields. I am not an expert in labor economics, but it appears we have a severe shortage in these type of college graduates and a still-growing surplus in graduates who studied other fields (e.g., psychology, sociology, political science, history, etc.). Of course, market forces will work things out one way or another eventually...

Lastly, college is a rather expensive way to "find yourself" these days. But if that is what you want and you (or your parents) can afford it, you are free to choose that. More power to you.

Also, why have we never discussed the comments Obama made about high school in his SOTU? He practically implied he is in favor of mandatory schooling until 18, not 16. Mind-boggling, if you ask me. It reminds me of the proverb, "you can take a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink it..."

We are importing them -- and treating them badly. The horrible HB1A visa that allows tech companies to underpay tech people is a good reason for Americans to steer clear of tech fields.

Don't get me wrong -- it's not a bad idea to encourage highly-educated tech people into America. I'd like them to be paid enough that they have cause to join the American gene pool.

What's wrong with "finding oneself"? People who never  "find themselves" go around confused and often gravitate to self-destructive habits like booze, drugs, and reckless sexuality. 

We have a surplus in about every field of academia because working people are badly paid. Sure, it is profitable -- but ultimately destructive. Were it not for the disappearance of industrial jobs that give a middle income to people of modest intellect and imagination but good work ethic we might not have so many mediocrities entering college. 

Let's see -- what prospects do high-school dropouts usually have?

Destitution

Crime

Early death

The Armed Forces don't want high-school dropouts; they have far too many disciplinary problems. Few employers want them because dropping out of high school implies a rebel if not an ignoramus.

Here's the dirty little secret of the American economy. Our productivity is now high enough that we can make in 20-25 hours what we used to make in 40. Workers have been getting the shaft from employers instead of a rising share in the production. Much of what happens in an office -- where productivity gains were slow before the introduction of PCs and word-processing software -- is now office politics. Many temp agencies supply clients hired for only 28-32 hours a week because there isn't enough work to justify the effort.

It's labor-saving technology that has created miracles of productivity -- and bureaucratic elites who have grabbed all of the advantage while driving pay down. Such is classic exploitation straight out of a Marxist stereotype of capitalist plutocracy.

Note well that the amoral, high-functioning sociopaths can do exceedingly well in such a system. The system ensures that plenty of whiskey, gold-digging mistresses, mansions, sports cars, and 'elite' vacations are available to the bureaucratic elite who can tolerate what they do to the common man.

We are five years away from major reforms of the system or twenty years away from a Red revolution -- and by "Red" I mean the sort with hammer-and-sickle devices and icons of Marx and Lenin. It used to be that the Marxist dictum "Workers of the World, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!" was outmoded when working people had cars, spacious flats, electronic entertainments, appliances, and comfortable furniture.

Conservatism that offers the common man nothing is a tragic fraud.   

Offers man nothing? What does man offer himself? I was on a job 4 years ago and the subcontractor dropped out of high school during his second year of 9th grade and was making $126,000 a year. Tell him he needed to go to college so he can make $70,000. Most of my friends graduating from college can't find work and it's because we have too many people qualified for high paying jobs that don't exist in such high numbers.  Several people going to college only rack up debt. We can't all be doctors and lawyers.  If we were all doctors, then who would teach school? The perfect economy has a perfect balance among sectors. At my buddy's office, there are people with Ph.D's in molecular biology and nuclear physics making only $30,000 a year. College is only good for an individual if you put it to use. To Obama who doesn't understand any of this because of his elitist and liberal background, looks down on people who don't go to college or so it seems. Or, perhaps he just wants more debt in order to enslave people towards the federal government. His idea for 10 years working for the government in exchange for elimination of school debt screams of ancient Rome's policies of enslavement for those of you who are ignorant of classical culture.  I know it's easy to jump the gun and talk on impulse, "education is imporant because it's our future" or "not going to college makes someone less intelligent." Tell those things to my subcontractor friend making $126,000 a year. Explain to me IN DEPTH DETAIL how it would be productive for us to have only doctors and lawyers?  Who would work the farms, grow food, package products, cook?  Please explain in depth detail to me how those professions are less noble or somehow below being a doctor or lawyer?

Well said Tidewater - couldn't have put it better.

oh thanks lol

We might want to look at some data here:
Employment status of the civilian population 25 years and over by educational attainment, Jan 2012:
Less than a High School Diploma: 15.0
High School Diploma, No College: 9.5
Some College/Associate Degree: 7.5
Bachelor's Degree or Higher: 4.4

The labor force participation rates for these same for groups are:
Less than a High School Diploma: 45.3
High School Diploma, No College: 59.8
Some College/Associate Degree: 69.3
Bachelor's Degree or Higher: 75.7

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t04.htm
Yes, there are lots of people who didn't finish high school, or who finished high school but didn't get any further education, who've done well for themselves, because they've worked hard and made good choices. There are also people who have advanced university degrees who don't do well. But averages matter, too.

This is true but if everyone has a college degree and competes for high salaried jobs, then what happens to jobs that produce products and other services? Alot of why our manufacturing sector is gone is because people go to college instead of trade school. This is what happens when everyone goes to college. Again, college is good if you end up doing something that requires a degree.

I don't think the issue is purely about 'University'...

Which is the problem, Obama NEVER said everyone must go to college. He referred to vocational and technical training also. What he's referring to is that in a period of economic downturn, more skilled workers tend to be less badly affected. So committing to a year of higher training/education is not about snobbery or elitism or any other of the inflammatory Gingrichesque feigned outrages Santorum is talking about, but trying to ensure you have some degree of insulation.

It also feeds into the ongoing anti-intellectualism that permiates the GOP right now... and considering that all the nominees are highly-educated and have benefited from that education it's hypocritical to the EXTREME to suggest that urging people to upskill during a time of crisis is some kind of warfare.

He echoes the elitist and intellectual mindset of the left though when he talks about it. I hear alot more than encouragement coming from Obama regarding education. If what you said was true, he'd be identical to Newt Gingrich and that's not the case.

Lol... you might hear it, but that doesn't mean the policy in practice is any different.

Just out of curiosity... because I'm genuinely curious, what is an elitist to you? Because I think perception OF a person will matter more, regardless of what they actually do or say.

He would have it that way if the Republicans wouldn't have won the House in 2010. It is all perception but perception is based on how that person behaves. If someone talks down to those in other positions and believes they know what's best for others more than they do. The anti-smoking crowd for example. I think people should be left alone in situations that don't effect others. You're right about perception. I'd add too though that if someone agrees with a candidate, they're more likely to back them than accuse them of elitism.

The reason those jobs in manufacturing are going overseas is because it's possible to pay people in other countries a tenth as much money as American workers cost. They're often much less productive workers than Americans would be, but if wages are low enough, that's not a problem.

I have known of people with advanced degrees who give up the pretense that their learning and early-chosen profession is so noble that it must be asserted by working for near-starvation pay for 'ignoble' work as a miner or assembly-line worker who gets real pay for real work.  Economic reward means something... like steak and seafood as opposed to repeated mac-and-cheese or ramen noodles. Many kids of families whose chief breadwinner has a skilled trade find that college is just not right for them and goes to an apprenticeship for a skilled trade.

People did not need and still do not need appreciable training to do industrial labor. Industrial labor has disappeared because the bureaucratic elites who wield the real power within corporations have chosen to transform their manufacturing firms into importers, effectively forcing the working class and much of the middle class into the working poor who tend cash registers and sweep floors.

People didn't go to trade school to become industrial laborers or miners. They still don't. The trade schools on the whole have poor rates of return on investment for students as do non-selective colleges that allow about anyone in who will pay the tuition or take out a loan for education.

People are getting the clue that if one wants any chance at a good life one needs to either attend college and get a degree so that one can be perhaps a school teacher or get a lucrative trade such as "plumber" or "diesel mechanic". The middle income jobs that used to require a strong back and a good work ethic have largely disappeared due to the decisions of America's corporate nomenklatura. We are headed to an economy as inequitable as that  typical of a fascist dictatorship.

Do you have any facts to back up this assertion - I'm seeing just the opposite.

So does 80k in debt.

I thought it would be useful to review what Obama actually said in the SOTU

If you hear that and think, Obama is trying to indoctrinate our kids into an elitist secular mindset, then you really need to get out more.

I am not disagreeing, but what do you think pushing the mandatory age from 16 to 18 is going to accomplish? If somebody wants to drop out at 16, they should be allowed to do so. They're never going to finish either way, and forcing them to continue through 18 is a drain on resources that would be better applied to people who actually want to be there to learn. There are only so many resources to go around. We live in a world of scarcity. You cannot legislate away problems with the stroke of a pen. And most of these fancy ideas from Washington just create more problems without solving the original problems. The federal government should be out of education altogether. Resources are better allocated at the state/local level.

You're absolutely right. The tragic part is that government interference causes a lot of the shortages and excess-supply problems (i.e., surpluses) we experience over a sustained period. If markets were allowed to operate more freely, America would have less of what it does not want/need (i.e., less instances of excess supply) and more of what it does want/need (i.e., less instances of excess demand; shortages).

It may not be so much that institutions like Harvard, Stanford, Rice, the University of Chicago, MIT, Cal Tech, and some top-notch public universities (California, Michigan, Illinois, Texas)   are better at teaching as it is that they get better mental material to begin with. SAT and ACH scores mean something. Attending "Kegger State" or "Biblical Literalism University" doesn't help a young adult  on the average. That's not snobbery but certifiable qualification (intelligence and not being a scatterbrain) associated with academic success.

Face it -- the US worked its way out of the Great Depression largely through the formation of small businesses that depended upon whole-family effort, low yields, and long-term investment that people couldn't run from without losing everything. It is now difficult to compete with the chains that take advantage of the benefits of vertical integration and economies of scale on everything from advertising to tax compliance. The tax structure of an effectively-flat tax upon business income above about $100K now favors giant corporations  over mom-and-pop organizations.  Maybe we need to go back to the high graduated taxes that gave small businesses a niche in food service, retailing, banking, and even manufacturing as during the 1950s.

I've seen studies showing that effectively - Harvard, Yale and the Ivies in general do not substantially ouperform their colleagues at much smaller universities. Granted - the spread is much larger, but the differences are negligible. Is it worth paying the 150k or whatever it is for the Ivies now? For some, sure, but if you can get 80-90 percent of the benefit on 10 percent of the cost then who's ahead here?


Sans evidence for this case, yes, it's entirely based on reputation and not results, and is pure snobbery. Again, you can get about 80-90 percent of the benefit of the Ivies at a smaller university/college for a fraction of the cost.


Yeah, and we can kill the already suffering economy. Sounds like a great idea. 90+ percentage taxes just like in the Great depression.

Can we call this Great depression II?

Not really, since the real-world benefit of college is less education and more obtaining connections and putting something impressive on your resume.

Only if Obama is re-elected. The "hipsters" won't think Obama is hip when they're living off Campbell's tomato soup and unable to afford electricity, let alone cell phones and the Internet.

>Implying Mitt Romney and the Republicans will make it any better.

Which is why lying on your resume earns you the same benefit. There was a study showing this to be the case. Take random people from a phone book - stick harvard graduate on their resume, and they seem to do about as well as Harvard folks.

What this shows is that you're paying 150k for a line on your resume.

Uh, you could try putting "Harvard graduate" on your resume, but you'd eventually get found out and possibly be sent to prison.

The "fraction of the cost" thing isn't as true as it used to be. Over the past decade, the Ivies moved in the direction of making admissions needs-blind, and financial aid needs-based. At the same time, state legislatures across the country made the choice to shift more of the cost of undergraduate education away from taxpayers, and towards students.  As a result, for lots of kids from lower or middle-income households, it can actually be cheaper to attend an Ivy League school than a flagship state university.

For what it's worth, I think forcing someone to stay in school when they could getting an apprenticeship or undertaking more technical training is not necessarily right. However, there's the issue of encouraging kids to give themselves the best opportunity out in this current market by upskilling.

Listen to Obama's 2009 SotU, it's not about turning everyone in a latte/chardonnay, volvo-driving, Proust-reading liberal. It's about the hard truth that MOST people who don't try to invest time and energy into further education and training have a very difficult time in a tight job market.

However, to construe that as some kind of social conditioning or the bs that Santorum is spouting is utter stupidity. Santorum might be helping his base by scaring them about the "exotic" Professor in the White House - but it's going to further alienate the Independent voters who are already turning on the GOP candidates... every time they open their mouths.

Well said Polnut.  The only entertaining thing about the GOP race is seeing if the candidates will run out of feet to put in their mouth before they run out of room to stick additional feet in their mouth.

Polnut, while Rick could have said it more skillfully, the fact is that there is a considerable portion of this country who can remember when it was possible to get a decent middle-class job with just a secondary education.  They are resentful of the fact that it now generally takes tertiary education, and doubly resentful that this is because of a flawed secondary education system.

Feel free to disagree with the prescription that Dr. Rick has for the problem (I do) and with what he is attributing its cause to, but the symptoms are real, and Dr. Barack's "tertiary education for everyone elixir" is not the medicine the patients want.

I don't disagree completely, what I do disagree with is the attitude that this is some kind of social programming, it's reality.

Still my point remains that if everyone is a doctor or lawyer, no one would be there to manufacture products. You can bring back all the jobs you want and no one would be here to do them if we were all college graduates. Also, you're right about being able to pay people less. With as high as corporate taxes are here I wouldn't start a company on this soil. Without corporate taxes companies would come back because it would again be profitable to do business in the U.S. Unfortunately the Democrats can't stand that because they wouldn't be in control of every nook and cranny of our lives. Our money would be worth more too if we as Americans could agree to accept lower wages as a whole, but it would have to be simultaneous. By having less monetary to enforce lower prices, the value of our dollar goes up as well. You probably don't agree with me about this being the best way to do things which there's nothing wrong with that, but I don't see the government solving this problem. It's not a new problem and no difference has been made. I consider myself a moderate actually, but when it comes to education and economics, I'm a Goldwater/Reagan conservative.

Is anyone actually saying that everyone should go to college and become and doctor or lawyer?!

There is soooo much reaching going on here.

I am still puzzled how this is some complex issue......

Yes I know alot of people who say that and feel like their jobs are worthless which causes them to have no motivation in life or in their career. This stems from the liberal idea that if you don't go to college, then you can't accomplish anything. If the Democrats came right out and said that they'd lose votes so they speak in slick ways about it such as, "making college more affordable," or "equal opportunity." It's all a scam to get everyone enslaved to the federal government through school loans. Obama advocates this by wanting college graduates to work for the federal government in exchange for waving loan payments. For those of you who are ignorant to ancient history, this is what Rome defined as slavery.  Slavery back then meant someone who owed money or favors to another individual or body.