Rick Santorum Misses Facts on College Education

Travis Dichoso, Class of 2013
March 1, 2012
Filed under Quill

Okay, I haven’t technically completed my degree yet. However, I was quite literally appalled when I heard Rick Santorum in Michigan calling Obama a snob for wanting all students to attend college. I found myself in a situation that I rarely find myself in: defending Obama. Whether you believe shoving hoards of people through college devalues the meaning of a bachelor’s degree, or a bachelor’s degree is right for every person in every situation, his claims are obtusely not true. In his 2009 State of the Union, Obama called on every citizen to commit at least one year or more of higher education such as community college, vocational training, an apprenticeship, or a four year school. He went on to say that dropping out of high school is “not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.” Obama was trying to raise the competency of the country overall, not belittle those who do not have higher education. 

Santorum’s second claim was that the university turns religious people into non-believers through liberal indoctrination in order to remake students into his (Obama’s) image; making an allusion that this opposes our imago dei. This sentiment is contradicted in the Social Science Research Council’s study on higher education and religious practice published in 2007. The study found that while a deplorable 64% of students enrolled in a four year college “curbed” their church attendance habits, 76% of those who never enrolled in college reported a decline in religious service attendance. Furthermore, it was reported that 20% of people who did not pursue college degrees renounced “any and all religious affiliation,” whereas only 13% of four year college students replied affirmatively to the same declaration.²

In many debates, Santorum has brought up his belief in Faith and Reason, the intellectual tradition of our University. College is the place where our faiths must mature. Our parents are no longer dragging us to church. Here is where our conscious decision to have faith must be coupled with the conscious effort to practice that faith. It is a jejune view of faith to think that one’s faith is solely a summation of one’s environmental experiences; whether that causes one to be more religious or not. Faith is a personal commitment to what is greater than oneself, grown from reason. If faith cannot be questioned, what faith do you have? It takes doubt to have faith. Reason and Faith propel each other into attaining greater levels of depth and strength. As Blessed John Paul II said in 1988, “Science purifies religion from error and superstition, while religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes.”² My education in the sciences has given me the capacity to marvel even more at God’s creation and overwhelming conclude that our biological and physical laws are not a product of happenchance.

Objectively Santorum deserves a lot of respect, especially for adhering to his conscience in areas of morality and his work for the pro-life cause, but his language is edging on demagoguery. Public figures should inspire children to aspire and create better futures founded in the American optimism. Santorum’s words are not the rhetoric of a president; my college education has at least taught me that.