Santorum: Obama 'A Snob' For Wanting Everyone To Go To College

[tpfkaw]

In what country does everyone go to college?

[tpfkaw]

In what country does everyone go to college?

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

[tpfkaw]

In what country does everyone go to college?

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 45, 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.

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.

[tpfkaw]

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:

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

[tpfkaw]

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."

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

[tpfkaw]

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).

[tpfkaw]

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.

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

[tpfkaw]

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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.