Rudy Giuliani is no stranger to the public eye, so I’m sure you’re at least familiar in passing with the former mayor of New York City who was thrust into the limelight during 9/11. However, as far as I’ve seen and read in the media, he’s been almost as absent as discussions about education. Nonetheless, I’ll try to summon his ghost and see where he comes down on higher education.

After perusing his Web site and the Web, I can’t say that Giuliani is much concerned with higher education. His focus is primarily on elementary and secondary education. Coming from a quote in the article “Giuliani: Willing to Play Hardball With Higher Education” by The Chronicle, Giuliani lauds the quality of the higher education system. He credits the system’s success to the following: “American higher education is based on the quintessential American principle: choice.”

Choice is Giuliani’s mantra for his campaign. In K-12 education, he wants to give students more choice by funding voucher programs and supporting charter schools. He intends to give students and parents ways to escape “failing” schools. I’m not really sure how that helps failing schools improve, but Giuliani does have a history of turning around bad situations.

In one of the few insights into Giuliani’s stance towards higher education, The Chronicle outlined his actions with the City University of New York (CUNY). He put together a commission to end open enrollment policies at CUNY. He saw low entrance standards weakening the school system and performing more of a disservice than a benefit, since so many students dropped out being unable to perform at the college level. He strongly recommended cutting out a lot of remedial education and moving it to the community college system.

Because Giuliani can be so aggressive, he gets mixed reviews. Some say that he doesn’t listen once he gets set on an idea, and other people have cited lowered proportions of African Americans in some of the prestigious CUNY institutions (although African American enrollment across the whole system apparently is up). Others say that the quality of the education has greatly improved. Giuliani took on hard issues and pushed them through for the CUNY network of schools. That’s how Giuliani tends to work in most issues. He won’t back down from difficult scenarios, and once he sets on an idea, he’s going to fight it through to completion. Depending on where you stand on an issue, he’s a hero or zero.

The last note here is that he does have some ideas about bolstering workforce knowledge with associate’s degrees and technical certificates. I’d actually like to hear more about this because I think that there is a good deal of need for this.

All righty, on to Mister Huckabee.