A $50,000 piece of paper

Republican presidential candidates Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney are taking heat this week for statements they made about college education in America. Romney is being lambasted for suggesting that students not choose the most expensive college they can get into, Santorum for stating that universities are largely in the business of left-wing indoctrination. According to their detractors, they are hypocrites for making these statements because they both have advanced degrees. 

I have to wonder how anyone who is struggling with student loans can argue with Mr. Romney's position. Cost is ALWAYS relevant. Encouraging 18-year-olds (with their myriad of life experiences) to go six figures into debt to study Medieval dance at NYU is not doing them any favors. It's great to think that we should all pursue our wildest dreams and fulfill our intellectual potential, but at the end of the day, somebody has to pay the bills. Personally, I advise young people to borrow for a four year degree only if it is going to result in a marketable skill. For every person who 'finds' themselves in a liberal arts program, there's someone who finds themselves crying over their master's degree before they go to work at Wal-Mart.

You might think that I'm opposed to higher education. Nothing could be further from the truth. What I'm opposed to is thinking that education is a God-given right, that Harvard is worth any cost, and that the straight-through preschool-to-PhD education is ideal. I'm opposed to the assumption that the world doesn't need trades people. I'm opposed to pressuring younger and younger kids to commit to their life's work. What the modern world needs are life-long learners who expect their career path to have unexpected turns. We need to stop allowing academics to be the gatekeepers for so many professions.  We need to blaze paths that allow people to earn as they learn. We don't need to get our fries from a guy who speaks three languages, but we do need to learn some respect for the guy who works his butt off mopping floors so he can feed his kids. 

As for Santorum, he's sort of wrong. Statistically, most young people leave college with the same political leanings they arrived with, despite the best efforts of their professors. The indoctrination that has been more effective is the one that equates letters after your name with success, the one that believes that the philosopher is superior to the farmer, the one that says a skill is only relevant if it comes with a $50,000 piece of paper. 

The assumption that Santorum and Romney are guilty of hypocrisy is only reasonable if you accept that there is only one path to success and fulfillment. In fact, matching our ambitions to our abilities and our education to our aptitude is a much surer road to happiness than buying the biggest, shiniest degree we can.