59% of Republicans Think College Is a Negative

[applegrove]

59% of Republicans Think College Is a Negative

August 19, 2019 at 1:59 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 325 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2019/08/19/59-of-republicans-think-college-is-a-negative/

"SNIP.....

A new Pew Research Center survey finds that only 50% of American adults think colleges and universities are having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country these days, while 38% say they are having a negative impact – up from 26% in 2012.

“The increase in negative views has come almost entirely from Republicans and independents who lean Republican. From 2015 to 2019, the share saying colleges have a negative effect on the country went from 37% to 59% among this group. Over that same period, the views of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic have remained largely stable and overwhelmingly positive.”

.....SNIP"

[Takket]

1. because drumpf has turned wilfull ignorance into a virtue

by vilifying academia.

The strategy is pretty simple. The more educated and knowledgeable people are about how the world works, the more they vote Democrat. So what do you do if you are the GOP? Make sure people don't get educated!

[Bradical79]

5. You've got cause and effect reversed...

Republicans turned willfull ignorance into a virtue, which gave us Trump. He's the result of decades of GOP anti-intellectualism.

[Hortensis]

12. THIS! Yes. And it seems the fascistic anti-education

plan has been accelerating in this century, with many cuts to funding and to the very goals of education at all levels, notably at state colleges, degraded more and more in some areas to producing skilled workers for business. Worries about future employment encourage parents and students to self-funnel down these narrowing cattle chutes.

Here in Georgia, religious parents have also always had a serious problem of how to get their children that passport to the middle class - a degree - without the exposure to higher education corrupting them. Many of their kids (literally!) arrive at college suspiciously alert for attempts to steal their souls and/or turn them into liberals (to many the same thing).

[Caliman73]

8. There has always been a virulent strain of anti-intellectualism in America.

Way way before Trump came around. Like the other poster said, Trump is the result of, not the cause of this trend. Just look at how scientists, teachers, psychologists, doctors, and other "educated" people have been portrayed in film and literature. Very rarely have they been portrayed in a positive light. Typically scientists have been portrayed as maniacal and unethical, or as emotionally stilted nerds. Teachers are portrayed in somewhat of a better light but still, so many movies with indifferent, incompetent, or malicious teachers.

Think about the Scopes Trial and what was at stake. Religion in the US has been a force against secular education in the US and business interests have always wanted a workforce educated enough to operate machinery, but not educated enough to challenge the paradigms of social and economic governance.

As I said in my response to the OP, conservatism does not lend itself to critical thinkers. The goal of conservatism is to maintain or enhance the values of the status quo, to erase the gains that have been made socially by research into economic, environmental, and social issues. The University presents a clear threat to conservative thought.

[onecaliberal]

2. their stupidity is burning all of us.

[smirkymonkey]

3. That's really sad.

Ignorant, uneducated and proud of it. No wonder we are in the shape we're in. How depressing.

[Algernon Moncrieff]

4. It's a super trendy POV right now

Mike Rowe telling everyone that trade work is a clearer path to solid earnings (not untrue). Dave Ramsey hates all debt, so the fact that he hates student loan debt is no surprise. There is another one out there whose name eludes me at the moment who asserts that parents are better off telling their kids to use their college money to start a business than to get a degree.

The problem is that it isn't, and shouldn't be, "either/or." It should be both. Learning a skill/trade can be great. But someday, you may not be able to lay tile on your hands and knees or lift air handlers into attics. Take some business courses; take some classes in management.

[maxsolomon]

7. Binary oppositions are the bane of America.

It SHOULD be both.

Sure, jokes about degrees in "Underwater Basket Weaving" degrees are timeless, but you can't be an Professional Engineer without college. Or a Doctor, or an Architect, etc.

[Jake Stern]

9. It's a POV I somewhat share

I can only speak anecdotally, using family and friends as a reference. My cousin went to Vo-Tech for a automotive repair certificate and now owns his own garage while a friend with a Master's degree is now a department manager at Walmart.

My contention isn't that college sucks and trade school is amazing, it's that we have developed this attitude that a young person needs to go to college in order to truly make something of themselves and that trade school is for those who couldn't hack college.

There is a very real stigma attached to trade schools that folks like Mike Rowe, like him or hate him, have worked to eliminate.

Not everyone is college material.

[Caliman73]

6. Of course they do.

When I went to University I was introduced to a great many topics that expanded my world view. Granted, I was already at least a center left Liberal if not an more progressive leaning person. I was taught how to look at research, how to discern bias, and how to question results with a critical focus. I was taught alternative views on historical events, not taken from the standardized historical curriculum usually given in K-12. Essentially everything that is completely anathema to holding a conservative world view. Granted, you can go to University and remain, or become conservative, but the whole purpose of a Liberal Arts education is to expand knowledge, which as I said, goes against what is required to be a conservative.

It is no wonder that conservatives hold negative views on University education. The more exposure you have outside your conservative bubble, the harder it becomes to hold onto conservative ideology.

[onetexan]

10. That's a no-brainer the party of regressives doesn't want an educated public. Harder to control.

Ignorance breeds further ignorance.

"Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil." Plato

[world wide wally]

11. Once again, I have to recommend the movie "Idiocracy"

Forewarned is forearmed