Obama's college plan, first mentioned in his State of the Union address, was packaged as an answer to the unemployment problems of young Americans.   Only four percent of college graduates are unemployed he said.  The goal of Obama's plan is to make higher education more accessible by encouraging colleges to make it more affordable.  Packaged in this manner you can understand the outrage when Santorum questioned Obama's motives calling him a snob.  In an appearance on Glenn Beck Santorum said "I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college because their indoctrination mills, absolutely.  The indoctrination that is going on at the University level is a harm to our country."  The statistics present a more complicated situation than you hear in the public debate.  Yes, young Americans who do not go to college struggle to practice their faith as well.  Some statistics suggest that every year of higher education equals a greater likelihood of believing in God.  However, the analysis of the stats presented by Billy Hallowell at the Blaze suggests that the statistics show college educated Americans are more likely to be liberal in their ideas with each year of education.  There is support for Santorum's concern about indoctrination but to focus on that misses  Santorum's more fundamental message regarding education. The point here is about more than the impact on the religious practice of students; its about the pursuit of happiness and a healthy economy.

Santorum clarifies his comments in an interview with Stephanopolous:

I think because there are lot of people in this country that have no desire or no aspiration to go to college, because they have a different set of skills and desires and dreams that don't include college.  And to sort of lay out there that somehow this is -- this is -- should be everybody's goal, I think, devalues the tremendous work that people who, frankly, don't go to college and don't want to go to college because they have a lot of other talents and skills that, frankly, college, you know, four-year colleges may not be able to assist them.  And there are other -- there's technical schools, there's additional training, vocational training. There's skills and apprenticeships. There's all sorts of things that people can do to upgrade their skills to be very productive and build their community.

This quote lays out the dynamic that underlies, and should form, the debate over whether there is liberal indoctrination at secondary schools.  Santorum knows that the answer to the indoctrination question is to focus on efforts at the level of the local community and the family. The graduation rate among college students is only sixty percent and more federal intervention is not the answer. The real problem with students in higher education occurs in the formation of students in the local school system and community before students arrive at the University.  Obama is favoring a population of young Americans educated, in the absence of their family, to the utilitarian pursuit of a career in white collar work over creating blue collar jobs that involve manual labor where training and work is closer to home.  This aim of Obama works in conjunction with his preference for educating America's youth to progressivist ideals rather than educating them to the pursuit of virtue.

The Christian tradition is much better equipped to understand the value of manual labor than the elites that comprise the Obama administration.  They are bound to their ideology and all too distant from the labor that has built western civilization.  Where can we find a truly rounded understanding of the value of manual labor?  There is no better place to look than in the Benedictine monastic tradition.  In an article written about the Catholic land movement and distributism, Abbot Phillip Anderson shares his wisdom about the value of manual labor.  His comments are quite pertinent to Santorum's perspective on the economy.  In order to grab the Christian insight into the value of manual labor, I will seem together Abbot Anderson's thoughts about manual labor.  In the quote below from his article Learning From The Land: In The School of Saint Benedict, he writes: 

One of the pillars of the Rule is evangelical poverty. There would be neither an economic crisis in the world today, nor an ecological threat, were it not for the evil done by greed. Monastic poverty means being content with the simple things that sustain human existence in its inherent goodness.  Of course, the great corollary of evangelical and monastic poverty is work, especially manual work. Ora et Labora ("Pray and Work"') is often given as the Benedictine motto. The very early monks found that this work with one’s hands was something necessary in order to be able to pray well. Sometimes they would burn all the baskets they had woven during the year — having no need to sell them in order to make money — and start all over again, simply because this activity was good for body and mind! Saint Paul worked with his hands, even though he was entitled to live from his preaching of the Gospel.

Good education occurs in the school of family and community where persons are educated to beauty, truth and virtue.  They are educated to reality!  The education plan of the progressive left will educate to homosexual marriage, right to abortion, sexual libertinism, having over being, efficiency over methodology and ultimately to vice not virtue.  This is nothing new.  I recall an incident when I was in college where this agenda was palpable.  I approached the cafeteria for dinner and a student at a table offered me a condom; they were handing them out for free.  When I said no, my friends ridiculed me.  The message was loud and clear, you should be having extramarital sex.  Its an education without hope.

The Administration showed its true colors when it threatened colleges with loss of federal funds if they don't meet Obama's standards and requirements.  The education plan of the Administration is a power grab to harness more control over the nature of education and over the lives of America's youth.  Combine this type of federal interference with progressivist ideas of separation of church and state, primary role of public education, high taxes, and our freedom to live as a local community according to our own values, and according to our own vocation, is greatly diminished.

Rick Santorum is greatly criticized because he is the only candidate in the race, and probably in my lifetime, that understands the familial source of freedom.