US Republican candidate Rick Santorum’s attack on President Barack Obama’s promotion of a college education conflicts with the broad appeal and economic value that higher education holds for young Americans, write William Selway and Timothy R Homan for Bloomberg.

With the economy still struggling after emerging from a recession, more than two-thirds of US adults view a college degree as essential for getting a good job, according to a Gallup Poll published in August. And 94% of parents with children under 18 expect them to go to college, said Paul Taylor, executive vice president at the Pew Research Center in Washington. “It’s a near-universal aspiration,” said Taylor.

Santorum, a former US senator from Pennsylvania, knocked Obama for seeking to have more Americans attend college. Obama has announced a goal of making the US the country with the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020.
Full report on the Bloomberg site