Ask yourself this: What good is a college degree if you can’t get a job after you graduate? Additionally, how will you pay off your student loan debt? Debra J. Saunders of Townhall examines these issues in a new piece.

Price of Obama’s ‘College Affordability’

“No family should have to set aside a college acceptance letter because they don’t have the money,” President Barack Obama told the Democratic National Convention as he accepted his party’s nomination in Charlotte, N.C., this month.

That sentence — key in Obama’s “college affordability” agenda — says everything about this administration’s approach to selling itself to the American voter.

What’s wrong with the message? Let me count the ways.

–It ignores reality. There is no reason a qualified poor kid cannot get into college in the United States simply because of money.

Richard J. Vedder, director of Ohio University’s Center for College Affordability and Productivity, told me that Obama’s correct, “people might get an acceptance at a relatively expensive private school that they can’t afford to go to.” But if students are accepted into one college, they can get into another, more affordable college, such as a community college, where Pell Grants cover tuition.

“If he’s saying that not everyone can get into whatever college they want to get into, he’s probably right,” Vedder said. “I’m not sure that the American people would agree that every student should be able to get into the school they want.” As an example, he mentioned Harvard University.

–It hints that GOP rival Mitt Romney would usher in a Hobbesian era in which poor kids are denied all opportunity to a college education.

To the contrary, Brookings Institution fellow Beth Akers recently blogged that Romney has “expressed a preference for redistributing aid dollars toward the neediest students.”

Akers concluded that both Obama and Romney want to “tackle” college affordability — Romney through market-based reforms, Obama with increased Pell Grants and price controls.

–It ignores the fact that a college education is not a ticket to the middle class or beyond if graduates cannot land good jobs.