Set aside that they've been defunding their local schools since the Reagan administration. That's an issue, but it's at a scale the average part-time farmer, semi-full-time factory worker in the rusty midwest just cannot see, because they're too close and the issue is too large.
So take that average person: they've got 40-100 acres under cultivation, possibly shared with some other family members. They or someone in their nuclear family works a full-time job for benefits and regular income. Their kids went to the local public schools, which were built in the late 60s and early 70s, have not been updated, and have been extremely cash strapped since the early 1980s. The schools tend not to be all that challenging, because their state funding requires they keep grades and basic achievement at a level that's fairly easy to maintain, so the schools don't push the kids very hard, because challenges can look like failing achievement. An average, reasonably intelligent, reasonably obedient child in a smallish community can usually pull very good grades for limited effort. Their kids got an education that seemed adequate to the parents, because it was similar to the one they got.
The really talented kids go away and never come back. The pretty darn clever ones go away to state schools and never come back. For those average, reasonably intelligent, never pushed kids, college is all but out of attainability, except at the community college level. Even CC work is fairly intensive and will require some level of loans, but the parents still expect the new college student to work, and the kid probably can't afford to go if the kid isn't working. But work and school do not cooperate all that well, and the kid that was an adequate, even excellent, student in a public school that wasn't challenging will flail in the more academically demanding college world. It's not possible to coast at the post-secondary level. So the kid flails, doesn't know how to ask for help because the kid has never before needed to ask for help, and fails out or quits, assuming they're too dumb for college. And they're stuck with the loan, and no way to get back in the game. It's easy to draw the conclusion that the kid would have been better off never trying at all, and therefore, college is a waste of time and money. The success stories went away and never came back, and that's an insult to community cohesiveness -- those damn liberals stole our kids. The ones who never tried are often doing a little better than the ones who flailed (because they've got a little bit of a head start without those wasted years and loans).
The people who don't value the education are looking at the problem from the wrong side, but they're coming to a conclusion that fits their perspective.
I don't agree with them, I think they're wrong, but they're not going to listen to an academic like me anyway. I left.
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