Fear of Education

Some American conservatives seem to be blaming college education for their electoral failures. Stanley Kurtz:

The college educated professionals at the heart of Obama’s coalition are products of an academic culture that not only leans far-left, but is dedicated to producing precisely the national political outcome that Obama represents. Obama himself was both a product and a member of the elite leftist university faculty.

In contrast to Reagan’s appointees Bill Bennett and Lynne Cheney, the Bush administration avoided public battles with the academy. Republicans nowadays tend to write off academia as silly and irrelevant. Meanwhile, our colleges and universities have been quietly churning out left-leaning voters for some time. Not all graduates go along, of course, but many do.

Higher education is also connected to the demographic roots of Obama’s victory. Prior to World War II, college was still the path less traveled. By the sixties, it had become common. Now years of post-graduate professional education for a large percentage of Americans have pushed back the age of marriage, increasing the numbers of single women so crucial to Obama’s coalition. The phenomenon of extended singlehood is at the root of the new social liberalism as well, not to mention the demographic bust driving our entitlement crisis.

David Gelertner:

But we’ve won civil wars and preserved the Union before. We’ll do it again — if we face up to the fact that we need to replace our schools and colleges now; the grace period has lasted a generation, but it’s over. I know we can do it and I’m pretty sure we will do it. Americanism is too strong and brilliant and young to die.

If college-educated professionals tend to vote Democrat, maybe instead of attacking education conservatives should make their policies and rhetoric more intelligent.There is such a thing as intelligent, educated conservatism, but the Republican party has abandoned it in favor of bloviating yahoo-ism.

UPDATE

I just checked the CNN exit poll data, and their results show that going to college doesn't have that much effect on voting anyway. Obama's percentage of the vote:

Did not finish high school: 64
High school diploma: 51
Some college: 49
College diploma: 47
Post-graduate degree: 55