INDIANAPOLIS – For casual observers of higher education trends, Gov. Mitch Daniels’ statement that not every student should aim for a traditional college degree may have seemed strange, coming just before he was elected unanimously as the president of one of those top degree-granting institutions.
“For the first time, people are writing articles about (the questions): ‘Is college worth it?’ ‘Should so many people be going to college?’” Daniels said the day before he was appointed Purdue University’s new president last week. “There are more Americans today with college debt than with college diplomas. So there are an awful lot of people saying that, as important as it is, the way it is may need some changes.”
Spending on higher education and the value of a traditional college degree have increasingly become dominant topics in the national political debate as job growth continues to struggle and the cost of education increases.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated in March that total student debt topped $1 trillion late last year, leading some economists and politicians to dub it the next massive credit “bubble” in danger of bursting. State support for higher education, meanwhile, has suffered along with almost every other area of government as the recession, and state lawmakers, shrank budgets across the nation.
The deflating of that bubble or reinforcing of it, depending on the political stance and perception has slowly built into a national debate in this election, which has politicians and academics reassessing traditional roles of American universities.
Daniels’ remarks echo similar sentiments from Indiana state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett and Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike Pence, who have talked about increasing the number of high school students graduating either with, or into, certification programs.
Pence’s first detailed policy proposal, in an election cycle decidedly centered on jobs and the economy, urged Indiana high schools to put more students in vocational education programs, which can land them in moderately skilled jobs immediately after graduation.
