A second term for President Barack Obama will bring a greater focus on higher education, according to Education Week reporter Alyson Klein.
“I think that K-12 got a lot of play in the first term, and now I think it’s higher education’s turn,” she said during a panel discussion this week. Klein added that Pell Grants and student loans were big education issues during the campaign, especially to young people.
“We talk about Latinos being part of the Democrats’ coalition; youth voters were a huge part of their coalition,” she said.
Klein was one of five education experts on panel titled “What will the 2012 election mean for education?” hosted by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research on Thursday. The panel also featured Katherine Haley, a policy advisor to Speaker of the House John Boehner, Frederick M. Hess, AEI resident scholar and director of education policy studies, Andy Rotherham, a co-founder and partner at Bellwether Education, and Kristen Soltis Anderson, vice president at the Winston Group. The event was moderated by Andrew P. Kelly, AEI education policy studies research fellow.
Several of the panel members are pessimistic about the state of higher education funding, especially in light of the current economic situation. Hess called the political discussion on Stafford Loans an “embarrassing panderfest,” saying one of the few areas on which both sides of Congress agree is “can-kicking and free stuff.”
Rotherham warned that Americans should keep an eye on Pell Grants. “Pell Grants have become — it’s like the Pacman,” he said. “It’s quietly eating the budget. The shortfalls are significant.”
The good news is that America’s debt crisis might be the fire starter to education reform, both in funding and quality of education, according to Soltis Anderson. She said voters are frustrated by the deficit problem, and cuts to education are becoming less controversial because of it, with Americans realizing that “everything needs to be on the table.”
“I think the really troubling state of the economy has offered an opportunity to reformers,” she said. Like Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in the end of October, Soltis Anderson asserted that raging unemployment might not be due to a lack of jobs, but due to low quality education. “Long-term unemployment has led people to start saying, ‘Maybe there’s a skills issue here.’ So they’re beginning to link education to the economy.”
While Obama’s second-term agenda for higher education is vague and lacking specifics, at least education experts and scholars believe it will get more attention. Something is better than nothing.
