White House press secretary Jay Carney later said that he didn’t believe Obama was specifically reacting to Santorum’s “snob” comment. But Carney addressed it directly: “I don’t think any parent in American who has a child would think it snobbery to hope for that child the best possible education in the future, and that includes college.”
Santorum’s main challenger, Mitt Romney, steered clear of pointedly agreeing or disagreeing with either Santorum or Obama.
“There’s no question but that those who have the skills and the interest in going to college we’d like to see have that opportunity, but there are some people of course who have a different course in their lives,” Romney said Monday in an interview with Detroit radio station WXYT. “Not all of our people are going to graduate from college, and we need to let people have their own course in life. But surely if someone wants to go to college we hope that the tuition cost of college will be affordable so people can make that choice for themselves.”
Santorum and Romney each have three college degrees — a bachelor’s, an MBA and a law degree. Obama has a bachelor’s degree and a law degree.
Interviewed Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Santorum recalled a statistic that suggested more than 60 percent of kids who enter college committed to a faith leave without it. He said there are “some real problems at our college campuses with political correctness, with an ideology that is forced upon people who, you know, who may not agree with the politically correct left doctrine.”
In December, at a campaign stop in Iowa, Santorum attacked the culture of higher education, telling voters that colleges and universities have become “indoctrination centers for the left.” He also took a swipe at Harvard University’s motto, “Veritas,” which is Latin for truth. “They haven’t seen truth at Harvard in 100 years,” he said.
Santorum, a former two-term U.S. senator from Pennsylvania who lost re-election in 2006, has often criticized what he views as elitist. Some of his greatest levels of support have come from voters without a college education, said Chris Borick, director of the Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa.
Santorum’s more recent comments on education appear part of an effort to energize blue-collar Republicans, and the topic provides a backdrop for him to define his conservatism, Borick said.
Elite colleges have long faced accusations they are out of touch politically with ordinary Americans. And in recent years, polls show eroding confidence in the integrity of colleges and that they have students’ interests ahead of their own bottom lines.
However, in the last decade the proportion of Americans saying higher education is essential for success has roughly doubled from about 30 percent to roughly 60 percent, said Patrick Callan, president of the California-based Higher Education Policy Institute.
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