Yesterday, Bernie Sanders tweeted…
Providing a path for kids to go to the University of Iowa is a hell of a lot cheaper than providing them a path to go to jail. #iacaucus
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 14, 2015
Even more explicitly, Sanders later tweeted all kids should get free college:
What's radical about saying we want all our kids regardless of income to get free college? #NHPolitics pic.twitter.com/DBDkS0OQEp
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 14, 2015
Mike Rowe, host of CNN’s “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” took exception to that argument on his Facebook page:
Is it possible that Senator Sanders doesn’t realize the number of college graduates with criminal records? Is he unaware of the millions of successful tradespeople and entrepreneurs who didn’t pay for a sheepskin, but somehow managed to stay of the clink? Does he not recognize that comments like his will encourage more kids who are better suited for an alternative path to borrow vast sums of money they’ll never be able to pay back in order to pay for a degree that won’t get them a job?
Maybe not. Maybe the 140 character limit has doomed him to be misunderstood or taken out of context. Certainly, it’s happened to me. But regardless, the damage is in the headline, and Twitter is nothing but headlines. The truth, in my opinion, is this: There is no alternative for an education, and no hope for a person who doesn’t want to learn something useful and apply it. But there are many, many alternatives to college. And none of them come with a prison sentence.
Separately, who’s to say “we” “provide” young people with a “path to jail”? Don’t their decisions have something to do with the path they follow?