Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, the Democratic nominee for president, has offered a range of proposals designed to improve students’ college preparation, broaden access to higher education, and expand the economy through “home-grown innovation.”
The Democratic National Committee’s 2008 platform, which was adopted at the party’s national convention in August, promises more student aid, greater support for research, and an end to what it described as the politicization of science.
It includes a handful of concrete higher-education proposals that Senator Obama has advocated. Among those, the platform promises to provide a tax credit of up to $4,000 for college tuition for students who agree to perform public service. The tax break would be fully refundable, meaning that people who do not owe taxes could still benefit.
The platform also includes the senator’s plan to simplify the federal student-aid application process by allowing families to apply by checking a box on their tax forms. The plan would also provide grants to “successful community colleges” to train unemployed workers in emerging industries, would double federal funds for basic research, and would lift the ban on the use of federal money for research involving human embryonic stem cells that would otherwise be discarded.
Among the other prominent higher-education issues on which Senator Obama has taken stances are affirmative action and immigration.
In an interview conducted by e-mail with The Chronicle last fall, he argued that it remains appropriate for colleges to consider race in admissions decisions.
“We shouldn’t ignore that race continues to matter,” he wrote. “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.”
However, Senator Obama also argued that colleges should consider other measures of applicants’ backgrounds, too, when determining who faces disadvantages in the process. Institutions, he said, should take into account “white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed.”
At the same time, he said, people like his daughters should be treated by admissions officers as being “pretty advantaged” because they attend excellent schools and are the children of a U.S. senator and “a very talented and accomplished woman.”
On immigration, Senator Obama spoke in favor of a bill in California (which Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, later vetoed) that would have allowed some illegal immigrants who had attended high schools in the state to become eligible for California’s student-aid program. In general Senator Obama has said he supports federal laws that allow undocumented immigrants to pay a fine, learn English, and “go to the back of the line” for the opportunity to become a citizen.
