Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum recently criticized President Obama’s initiative to increase college-going as “elitist snobbery.” Said Santorum:
I have seven kids. Maybe they’ll all go to college. But, if one of my kids wants to go and be an auto mechanic, good for him. That’s a good-paying job – using your hands and using your mind. This is the kind of, the kind of snobbery that we see from those who think they know how to run our lives. Rise up, America. Defend your own freedoms.
The chart below, from the invaluable Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, shows the educational attainment of auto mechanics in three time periods:1968-1971, 1988-1991, and 2004-2007.
In the early 1970′s, when Rick Santorum was entering high school, most auto mechanics were high school dropouts. About a third had a high school diploma, and only seven percent had been to college or earned a degree.
Since then, cars have become a lot more complicated. They run on computers now. Fixing them requires increasingly sophisticated technical skills. Accordingly, more and more auto mechanics have acquired specialized training and educational credentials to match. By the late 2000s, less than 20 percent of auto mechanics were high school dropouts. By contrast, more than one-third had been to college or earned a degree. Presumably, educational attainment among younger auto mechanics, like Rick Santorum’s hypothetically mechanically inclined children, is substantially higher.
That’s why President Obama is pushing to help more student earn post-secondary credentials–not just bachelor’s degrees, but also associate’s degrees and occupational certificates tied to well-paying jobs. Obama’s educational strategy is aimed at the future economy, not the past.
