From today's NYT in the article:
April 1, 2012, 11:13 pm

The Politics of Going to College

By THOMAS B. EDSALL

http://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/the-politics-of-going-to-college/?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120402

(Explanation of the graph above excerpted from the article) "...M.I.T. economists Daron Acemoglu and David Autor, shows what has happened to the wages of men with various levels of education working full time (high school dropout, high school graduate, some college, college graduate, greater than college)."

Columbia professor Edsal summarizes the exchanges between Obama and Republican hopefuls Romney and Santorum regarding an expansion of federal support for less advantaged students to be able to go to college, and cautions (reasonably in my opinion) that the Republican party take a hard look at the illogical and self-contradictory statements its candidates are making on this issue.

Some of things Santorum has said such as the quote below are just shockingly ignorant. Scary.

Santorum: “President Obama once said he wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob,” Santorum told a Tea Party meeting in Troy, Mich., on Feb. 25. “I understand why he wants you to go to college. He wants to remake you in his image.”

??

It is true that not everyone needs to college. Some people can have very meaningful lives and develop themselves a lot by starting a career after high school (or after dropping out) and learning on the job or in technical schools, and learning in their personal lives. On the other hand, some may go to college and squander their opportunity (like many college kids in Japan--but very rarely at my university, fortunately). However, the issue is not increasing the absolute number of college goers or college graduates, but increasing the fairness of opportunity that each individual student has for going to a higher education program if they choose so and if they plan to put in the work that is needed to benefit from the opportunity.

Expanding opportunity for students who want to go to college and make efforts to get sufficient funding but can't (assuming there are such students) is not "snob" ism. To me, it seems to be a simple support of equal opportunity, which should be strengthened if the US wants to continue to be a active and prosperous society where the best ideas and best efforts are rewarded regardless of family economic status.

I included the graph above because it shows how the value of a college degree has increased over the past few decades in terms of financial compensation, and how the gap between college educated workers and high school grads is increasing. This gap is wider than I had thought. I assume this gap is widening because employers of companies with competitive jobs believe (and have found from experience) that those who go to college actually offer something that their employers have found of value, that those students would not have had if they had not gone. This graph in itself is not a case for increasing federal support for college tuition, but it explains the motivation that students and their families will have to try to get to college and further their education.

I think it is quite reasonable that our taxes be used to level the playing field on a federal level, assuming, of course, that the playing field is skewed. And my sense is that it is.