These words are a chilling message to every college, university, and tech school in America:
College isn’t the only path to the American dream.
-Tim Scott
He is absolutely right that America needs more skilled labor - one path is apprenticeships, but a path also is through technical education schools; and his home state, South Carolina, has the best technical education system in the United States. And it came about because of a partnership among a Democratic Governor, Fritz Hollings, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. SC Technical Colleges hire the best people, train them well, and give them the tools to train others. How about a shout-out to these people - the people who teach the skilled labor?
Instead, Scott in his most recent video wants to conjure up the boogeyman and, of course, it is President Biden and Communist China. Tim Scott doesn’t want you educated, he wants you fearful.
Fearful that “lawyers and professors” are coming to take away something from you.
I know the politics of today is attack, attack, all the time (except no one attacks former president Trump, for fear of retaliation), and I know that Tim Scott wants to run against Joe Biden because he is trying to convince Republican voters he can win the 2024 General Election. Not that he will get that chance - he won’t win his own party’s primary.
And, he knows it. This is all about setting up for 2028, so he can be the second African-American president in U.S. history — attack the elites, fear-monger the marxists, protect our carbon monoxide belching gas stoves (and save pizza) - I get it.
Reach across the aisle? Naw.
What I would like to see is President Biden tell his receptionist to take no more phone calls from “the other side.” He can justify it with regard to the United States House of Representative because he is being Impeached.
He can use that old, tried and true-ism of law enforcement and municipal government - “We cannot comment further because of the pending investigation.” It’s the very thing that has the United States Coast Guard Academy and the West Virginia State Police in public relations nightmares.
Scott’s video about college and the need for more welders is well-timed. The United States Supreme Court just shut the door to college for thousands of young people of color by saying we don’t need affirmative action any more. The “Justices” also took a stab at student debt - that’s the “lawyers and professors” Scott disdains in his latest campaign video. But, you know what, sunsetting student debt for thousands of young people could be the greater economic boom this nation has ever seen.
Out from under this crushing weight, a younger generation could buy that house, buy an electric car with a battery built in South Carolina - oh, scratch that, we are still reliant on fossil fuels - and have babies.
Rather than give people of baby-bearing age direct payments for each child they produce - a scheme designed to stem what conservative consider “the browning of America” - just get them out from under SOME of this debt (like we did with Covid payroll protection).
We encouraged them to go to college.
We built colleges to accommodate what we encouraged them to do.
We finally decided to pay professors a living wage.
Now - suddenly - all that is something for Tim Scott to look down his nose at - for Clarence Thomas to deny to others the leg-up he got from Yale? Naw, don’t buy into that - if you have to have brain surgery, you’re going to want doctors and nurses who graduated from college. Preferably at the top of their class.
And, if you need some welding done at the neighborhood nuclear plant, you can’t go wrong hiring a welder trained by Piedmont Technical College - especially if they trained at the Center for Advanced Manufacturing in Laurens, South Carolina.
Vic MacDonald is Editor of The Clinton Chronicle and a proud 1975 graduate of Newberry College. In June, 2025, he will observe his 50th year in community journalism. Reach him at 864-833-1900.
The video here.
And Scott talks about football here.
RELATED:
US Census Bureau partnership provides insight into earning trends of SC college graduates in the workforce
COLUMBIA— The South Carolina Commission on Higher Education announced today a new partnership with the United States Census Bureau for an online tool providing insight into the workforce-relevance of higher education programs through post-graduation income trend data of South Carolina college graduates by institution and program.
Post-Secondary Employment Outcomes (PSEO) are experimental tabulations developed by researchers at the U.S. Census Bureau, in cooperation with higher education institutions and institutional systems across the nation.
“This tool offers prospective students a way get insight into potential earnings by degree and even institution, based on real-world data,” said CHE President and Executive Director Rusty Monhollon, Ph.D. “This partnership can also help our state answer some of those questions about the intersection of higher education and the workforce, and also help us look back at those trends over time for different majors.”
PSEO tabulations show average earnings and employment outcomes for graduates of post-secondary institutions across the nation, and are generated by linking graduate transcript records to employer-household dynamics data. The data includes post-secondary graduates’ earning trends one, five, and ten-years after graduation.
The tool also provides data on where graduates who leave the state move to, and may ultimately provide the CHE and state leaders insight into how South Carolina can retain more graduates.
PSEO includes data from 825 institutions, which account for more than 29 percent of all college graduates in the United States. The Census Bureau uses state-of-the-art confidentiality protection mechanisms to protect the underlying data.
The PSEO Explorer tool is available to the public through the CHE website at:https://che.sc.gov/PSEO
Senator Scott talks about hogwash on Fox News here.
