(credit: WWJ-TV CBS Detroit)
Reporting Charlie Langton
Presidential candidate Rick Santorum made waves recently with a speech criticizing President Barack Obama as a “snob who wants everybody to go to college.” Santorum called colleges “indoctrination mills” in another speech.
But he took the anti-university stance further during Charlie Langton’s special Republican primary show on Talk Radio 1270 on the eve of Michigan’s primary, where Santorum said he was harassed for his beliefs during his college years at Penn State University. Santorum has a bachelor’s degree, an advanced law degree, and a master’s degree in business administration.
“Do you want your children to go to college?” Langton asked.
“I’m very careful about the colleges and universities our children go to,” Santorum said. “There are schools, I went to one — Penn State — that’s one of the liberal icons, unfortunately it’s gotten a lot worse. I can tell you professor after professor who docked my grades because of the viewpoints I expressed and the papers that I wrote, there’s no question that happened.”
“Your grades suffered because of your views at Penn State?” Langton asked
“Absolutely, absolutely,” Santorum said. “I used to go to war with some of my professors, who thought I was out of the pale, these are just not proper ideas. This is not something that’s not unusual, folks, I know this may be a surprise to some people … There is clearly a bias at the university.
“Saying there’s a bias at colleges, liberal, is like the French inspector in “Casablanca” saying “Oh my, gambling is going on here, the fake surprise, this is common fare.”
Santorum went on to say Obama shouldn’t urge people to get college educations, adding, “Only 29 percent of people in America go to college and graduate, that means a lot of Americans aren’t getting that four-year degree and by the way they’ve contributed greatly to our country. Look at, I think it was Bill Gates or Steve Jobs who didn’t go to college.
“There are lots of jobs that people can do that don’t require a college education … that require vocational schools, training.”
Langton asked if he regretted using the word “snob” to describe politicians who support higher education.
“If that’s the worst thing I get called (as president), then I’m a happy man,” Santorum said. “We’re talking about an idea that has persisted throughout this presidency, he believes he knows better about what people should do with their lives.
“This is this attitude that the elite in society can tell the rest of us how to live our lives. This is reminiscent of the country that we left where the nobility is going to sort of dictate to the masses.”
Hear the entire interview below.
