One of the absurdities of modern political life is the assumption that everyone, regardless of innate qualifications, should have a college education (indeed the assumption, at least on the Democratic side, seems to be not only that everyone belongs in college, but that every citizen person within our borders also has an inalienable right to a government-subsidized degree).
This is ridiculous, of course — but to admit that not everyone is endowed by Nature with the capacity for college-level intellectual work would be to discriminate, and thereby would violate the Prime Directive of modern liberal thought. Instead, the result of this obsessive and hallucinatory fixation on non-discrimination has been to flood colleges with unqualified students who have been indoctrinated to believe that they are capable of things they aren’t. This is a cruel folly, as it sets up a great many decent people for miserable failure — people who in a bygone era would have made for themselves happy, productive lives in some well-regarded and eminently useful skilled trade. By tainting such work as less respectable than the white-collar jobs available to college graduates, we end up fostering poverty and dependence — and we also hollow out a vital part of the middle class.
One person who understands this is Mike Rowe, host of television’s “Dirty Jobs”. He’s written a laudable open letter to Mitt Romney, which you can read here.