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

[Wisconsin+17]

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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.

[Wisconsin+17]

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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.

[Wisconsin+17]

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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.

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Because Republicans care about something outside of themselves?

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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.

[Wisconsin+17]

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?

[Wisconsin+17]

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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.

[Wisconsin+17]

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

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Bill Gates says hi.

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Bill Gates again says hi.

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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.

[Wisconsin+17]

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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.

[Wisconsin+17]

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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?

[Wisconsin+17]

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

[Wisconsin+17]

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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.

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

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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?

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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?

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.   

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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.

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

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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.

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

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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.

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

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

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

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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.

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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.

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You have kids? You ever raise any?

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

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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...

[Wisconsin+17]

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

[Wisconsin+17]

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

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So does 80k in debt.

[Wisconsin+17]

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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?

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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.

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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?

[Wisconsin+17]

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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.