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Obama and McCain on Higher Education

Posted on November 4th, 2008 by Nathan

Today being Election Day and this being an education blog, I thought it proper to outline how this election will affect your pursuit of higher education. Higher education has been a very minor issue in this campaign, overshadowed by the country’s current economic woes and financial crisis. However, higher education will be a vital part of the long term situation of the economy. Many countries’ workforces have been catching up to the United States in terms of education. Some may even soon surpass us. This will bear down heavily on American jobs as other areas of the world, with cheaper workers can equal or better us in the areas of innovation and highly technical work.

With the election occurring as I am typing, I will outline what the candidates have stated concerning higher education and my analysis on how this will affect the average college student (Joe the Student, if you will).

Barack Obama

We will begin with Senator Obama’s plans. First and foremost amongst Obama’s ideas to bolster higher education is to make it cheaper and more available to more students. He worked to increase the maximum Pell Grant limit from $4,050 to $5,100 through the HOPE Act. Senator Obama also plans on giving “most” college students $4,000 towards their education in exchange for 100 hours of community service work. In essence, this gives every college student who chooses a $40 per hour job for a few weeks. From the sources I perused, I did not find a list of restrictions will be put on that $4,000.

In July, Senator Obama did make some concerning remarks on for-profit schools (many of which are online schools). He mentioned that for-profit schools “siphon money away from public schools.” So this $4,000 may or may not be available to students of online universities.

Another idea proposed by Senator Obama is to eliminate the FAFSA (Federal Application For Student Aid) and replace it with a checkbox on IRS forms. The point of this is to greatly simplify the application process for student aid and increase the number of students claiming the aid that is available. This is likely to do the trick as the current application is five pages long and requires applicants to gather innumerable forms to find the information required.

Lastly, Senator Obama believes in increasing the amount of Affirmative Action in the higher education system. His stance is that, “Diversity enriches education,” and needs to be encouraged. In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education Senator Obama stated that the application system needs to encourage low-income as well as minority students who don’t have as stellar of academic records to be given extra incentives to attend college.

“We shouldn’t ignore that race continues to matter: To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in the socioeconomic disparities that we often observe turns a blind eye to both our history and our experience—and relieves us of the responsibility to make things right.”

The one shortcoming that I can see in Senator Obama’s plans are that he wants to increase the amount of students attending college drastically and make it a financially viable option for more students, but has not addressed the issue of the decreasing amount of space at public institutions. The question is, with more students able to go to college, will there be enough space? I don’t see this as a plan killer, but it will make the overall strategy very expensive when you add the cost of building additional facilities on top of $4,000 per student, more students receiving financial aid, and a higher amount of financial aid per student.

John McCain

On some points, Senator McCain’s plan is similar to Senator Obama’s. For example, McCain wants to decrease the complexity of the financial aid system to increase the amount of families that take advantage of Pell Grants and other forms of federal aid. Senator McCain also supported raising Pell Grant limits and the support of community colleges and vocational schools. McCain also promises to relieve the tax burden on families with students in college. However, he takes a different approach to improving the higher education system.

First, Senator McCain is seeking to reduce the amount of regulation placed on universities to encourage greater freedom for innovation amongst universities. This strikes a common chord with many of McCain’s other deregulation plans. Part of the deregulating is to limit Affirmative Action. Affirmative Action is a whole other subject with many deep-held beliefs on both sides so I will let the readers judge for themselves if this is a good idea or not.

Next, what I think is a great idea, is to make available all of the information that universities report to the federal government every year, available to parents in a clear and concise form. I am not sure what this information is, or how useful it will be, but more information is always better.

Lastly, McCain wants to change student lending programs to demand integrity and competition from the private sector. The plan does not give any more details on how this will be accomplished.

In general, McCain’s shortcoming on higher education is a lack of specificity, which communicates to me that it is not that high of a priority. This is probably true for both candidates as they will not receive a large number of votes today based on their higher education plans.

So what are my forecasts on the state of higher education after the election? My first thought is that not much will change. Too few people care about higher education right now for it to be much of a priority, at least in the near future. As other countries continue to catch up, the American public will become more and more concerned.

If each candidate follows through on their higher education reforms, you can expect a simpler application process for financial aid with either candidate. With Barack Obama, you may receive more money from the federal government especially for minorities and low-income students. Senator McCain will focus on increasing competition between universities and removing regulations to encourage innovation at our nation’s centers of higher learning.