January 9th, 2008
New Hampshire Debate ‘Whiffs’ on Education
Did anybody watch the New Hampshire debate on Saturday? I did. Six Republican candidates and four Democratic hopefuls squared off in back-to-back Q&A sessions in front of a select audience at St. Anselm College. Moderator Charlie Gibson of ABC News and Scott Spradling of WMUR-TV posed a number of questions that addressed various issues facing our country today. Here’s a quick rundown of the estimated time given to each topic:
- The war in Iraq and national security: 85 minutes
- Healthcare: 40 minutes
- Illegal Immigration: 30 minutes
- Education: 30 seconds
30 seconds??!! You’ve got to be kidding me!!!
You can’t blame the candidates here, though. No questions relating to education were even asked (shame on you, Charlie Gibson). Yet at the end of the debate, with 3 hours and 35 minutes gone by, Governor Bill Richardson finally stepped up to the plate:
“And lastly, we have not talked about education in this whole debate! We’ve got to improve our schools. We’ve got to pay our teachers better…”
Thank you, Governor. Someone finally said it.
In addition to quasi-admonishing the omission, Governor Richardson briefly mentioned his plan to offer two years of college tuition and expense money in return for one year of government service. And though he failed to expand on his ideas at the debate, the affable politician from New Mexico brings up and interesting subject: With tuition rates rising and student loan bills mounting for many, is public service in exchange for education money the answer?
Back in 1993, President Bill Clinton flirted with a similar idea, creating the AmeriCorps program with the National and Community Service Trust Act. Through this legislation, AmeriCorps would provide students with roughly $4,725 in college expense money per year in exchange for community service. Gov. Richardson’s recent plan builds on Clinton’s Act, and would give up to $24,000 to students who join the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, or Teach for America.
At the risk of stealing a little thunder from our friend Peavine, whose posts will discuss each of the candidate’s views on education, what do you think of Richardson’s proposal? With millions of students in college and the explosion of online degrees and distance-learning courses, is it time to reconsider the ’service for tuition’ plan? It’s clear that we need to do something to make postsecondary education more affordable in this country, but what?
great post! richardson has brought up national service at several debates… he’s come a long way on the issue. we’ll certainly miss his voice in the race after tomorrow.
obama, clinton, edwards, and huckabee are all supporters of expanding americorps by at least 100k members annually (and obama to 250k). mccain and romney are past champions, but have yet to voice specific support for national service programs in this election cycle.
m
Comment by Matt Wilhelm — January 9, 2008 @ 3:24 pm
Thanks for the comment, Matt. I think that the ’service for tuition’ program should be expanded. It definitely provides an excellent opportunity for many. However, just to present both sides of the issue here, let me play Devil’s Advocate a bit.
My only concern with the proposal is the ‘maximum’ amount of money that programs such as AmeriCorps are willing to offer students. Although I haven’t dug too deep into the numbers, it seems like the rough $5,000 – $6,000 per year is a little paltry. Back when I was in grad school (not too long ago), my expenses ran about $6,000 per quarter. I can see students avoiding these community service programs in order to enter the job market quickly and make money.
Nevertheless, you can’t knock community service. I think that more people should take time out of their day to help others. And in this case, they’d get something monetary out of it, too.
Thanks again, Matt.
- A.D.
Comment by A. Dupin — January 10, 2008 @ 6:47 am
I did watch the entire debate, thanks to TiVo, of course. There’s no way I was staying home on Saturday night to watch McCain smile nervously and laugh at nothing, Mitt Romney fix his hair every 60 seconds, and John Edwards admonish the upper-class endlessly (of which he is a part!).
And it’s easy to time each topic when a digital recorder does it for you. Thanks TiVo!!!
Comment by A. Dupin — January 14, 2008 @ 11:50 am
[...] to the New Hampshire debate, the war in Iraq and the economy took center stage in Vegas. MSNBC’s Brian Williams and Tim [...]
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