Too often, Democratic politicians take young voters for granted, thinking their votes can be easily captured. Though students surely applaud the attention President Barack Obama has paid to education — as senior Obama strategist David Axelrod showed in a conference call with student journalists on Monday — they already know the problems facing them. The president must earn the youth vote by making higher education a more prominent issue for all.
Both the economy and public universities in the United States are faltering. Obama needs to broaden the dialogue and clearly connect the two. His blueprint for higher education — which proposes a federal funding shift toward schools that keep tuition low and serve low-income students — is a solid start. But Obama must do more to demonstrate that his plans for higher education would ripple across the American economy by affecting debt, unemployment and the job market.
College is by no means the best choice for every person — individual success in this country is not contingent upon a degree any organization can confer. However, all voters must be informed enough to recognize that increasing educational opportunity, maintaining affordability and solving the student debt crisis lifts all Americans up.
If these problems are continually pushed out of the spotlight by petty politics and rhetoric, the public will neglect the quest for solutions. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s statement that universities “indoctrinate” students cannot be the dominant voice in the higher education debate, for example. Rather, Obama should strike back against such comments by using them as an opportunity to dispel misinformation and emphasize the urgent need for education reform in the United States.
The Republican candidates, too, should not discount youth support. Each could make the student vote a Republican vote if they included higher education in their vision. Instead of using their time to call Obama a “snob” for encouraging every American to go to college, as Santorum has, they ought to join the conversation by acknowledging the economic relevance of a mobilized and functional higher education network.
Obama could go further by making student concerns matter to every American. Republicans should do the same. With Election Day closing in, it is imperative that all presidential hopefuls expand their stance on the issue.
It’s our future on the line — candidates should see it as theirs too.
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“Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s statement that
universities “indoctrinate” students cannot be the dominant voice in the
higher education debate, for example.”
Why not, given there’s a lot of truth in it?
Let me make it clear that I’m no fan of Santorum, and I certainly hope that he’s not the GOP’s candidate to run against Obama. Having said that, the fact of the matter is that left-leaning academics have subordinated the original intent of public universities from acquiring knowledge and skills that permit them to be productive, taxpaying professionals, to pushing their particular social agenda. Santorum’s dead right on that one, even if he’s off-base on a lot of other things.
Democrats can easily get more student votes by calling for more funding, using taxpayer money. But when there’s more funding, colleges raise tuition. This vicious cycle won’t end until Democrats stop pushing every high school graduate, no matter how unprepared, to utilize their once-in-a-lifetime jackpot of Pell Grants, Cal Grants, and student loans to gamble on college. If the student drops out, well, so what, the grants were free and the loans can be forgiven in 20 years. If the student majors in an unmarketable degree, well, that just proves the 1% is outsourcing jobs and hiring Indian contractors, so the degree will still be worth it if the economy recovers. If the student has trouble repaying the loans, well, that proves the banks are colluding to keep student debt sky-high so Obama needs to slap down the banks. And if a few students find a good career, that just proves the liberals were right all along about how everyone should get a college degree.