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

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

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.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

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...

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.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

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...

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 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.   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.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I can't help having a pale complexion, and I'm a Japanese Literature major. Where do I stand?

You don't stand, you seiza.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

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.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

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.

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.

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.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

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.