The 2012 Election:
What Academe Needs to Know
There's more at stake than which candidates win federal and state offices. Explore our election guide to find out what's at stake for student aid, for-profit colleges, research, and more.
Author Archives: Michael Stratford
November 1, 2012, 2:56 pm
Obama Is Equally Favored by Young Voters With and Without College, Survey Finds
Young voters who have attended college favor President Obama by the same margin as their peers without experience in college, according to an analysis of poll data released on Thursday by the Tufts University Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement.
More than half of the 18-to-29-year-old registered and extremely likely voters who were polled said they supported President Obama, compared with about a third who preferred the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. There was little difference in candidate choice between voters who had at least some college experience and those who hadn’t.
However, young voters who had been in college were more likely to be following the election and to have formed opinions on policy issues.
Those voters who had attended college also appeared to be a more sought-after group for the Obama campaign. Such voters were more…
October 26, 2012, 3:54 pm
For Lynn U., Presidential Debate Was a Chance to Shine in National Spotlight
Lynn University was closed on Friday, as a precaution against Hurricane Sandy, which was barreling toward the region. But the campus in Boca Raton, Fla., was also recovering this week from a storm of its own making: hosting a presidential debate.
After months of intensive preparation and anticipation, the 90-minute debate on Monday came and went quickly, says Kevin M. Ross, the university’s president.
“The tens of thousands of people who came were here for about a day,” he says. “Within 24 hours of the event, everything was gone. The stage had been packed up and loaded on trucks.”
Since the Commission on Presidential Debates was formed, in 1988, colleges and universities have hosted nearly all of the presidential and vice-presidential debates between the two major parties. During that time, many large research institutions—the University of Miami, Arizona State University, the…
October 22, 2012, 8:43 pm
‘We’ve Never Heard of You, Either’
As hordes of reporters and politicians descended on Lynn University for Monday night’s debate, it seemed likely that at least a few of them quipped about the small private institution’s relative obscurity.
But the university, in Boca Raton, Fla., was ready with a feisty retort: “We’ve never heard of you, either.”
T-shirts quickly became one of the most popular aspects of the debate on the Boca Raton, Fla., campus. (Lynn U. photo by Helena Suba)
That was the message emblazoned on hundreds of official debate T-shirts that the university distributed to students over the past several days.
The idea for the slogan came from the university’s president, Kevin M. Ross.
“A lot of alums say to me that they wish our school were more widely known,” he said. “And I think it’s something that has bothered students…
October 22, 2012, 3:07 pm
U.S. Voting System Has Improved Since 2000, but Problems Remain, Report Says
Technological upgrades in voting machines have significantly improved the integrity of the nation’s electoral process since the confusion that marred the 2000 presidential election, but widespread problems persist in voter-registration systems and in the growing number of absentee ballots, according to a report released last week by the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.
“The effort over the past dozen years to improve voting machines has paid off,” said Charles Stewart III, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an author of the report. “Voters who go to the polls should be much more assured that their votes will count and be recorded as they intended.”
For instance, the gap between the number of ballots cast in an election and the number of votes actually counted has been cut in half since 2000, the report says. In that…
October 17, 2012, 12:50 am
In Debate, Romney Voices Support for Expanding Pell Grant Program
In the second presidential debate, on Tuesday night, the Republican nominee Mitt Romney offered some of his most explicit support yet for the Pell Grant program, while President Obama touted several of his administration’s achievements that affect higher education.
The first question in the town hall-style debate came from 20-year-old Jeremy Epstein, a junior at Adelphi University. Addressing Mr. Romney, Mr. Epstein asked about his job prospects as a college student who will graduate in 2014. Mr. Romney responded by saying he would seek to make college more affordable and ensure that students like Mr. Epstein had jobs when they graduated.
“I want to make sure we keep our Pell Grant program growing,” he said. Mr. Romney also touted a merit scholarship he instituted as governor of Massachusetts; the scholarship waives tuition at the state’s public colleges for students who…
October 4, 2012, 1:20 am
In Debate, Obama and Romney Clash Over Who Would Do More for Education
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and President Obama wave at the start of Wednesday night’s debate at the U. of Denver (Reuters/Rick Wilking/Landov).
In the first presidential debate of this fall’s campaign, which focused on domestic policy, President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, sparred over their tax plans, the federal deficit, Wall Street regulation, and health care.
Throughout the 90-minute debate Wednesday evening at the University of Denver, both candidates mentioned education several times in relation to its role in resolving the nation’s economic problems, and they sometimes traded barbs over whose policies would actually invest in education.
Mr. Obama charged that Mr. Romney’s economic plan would offer tax breaks to the richest Americans. Such a plan, he said, “will no…
October 2, 2012, 6:38 pm
In U.S. Senate Contest in Mass., Candidate’s Academic Post Is an Issue
Titles in academe can be a tricky issue, raising a host of complicated questions about identity, status, and etiquette.
But in one of the most closely watched Senate races this election season, the question of how to refer to a candidate who is also an academic is inherently a political one.
Elizabeth Warren (Photo by David Shankbone via Flickr/CC)
Elizabeth Warren, a professor at Harvard Law School who is running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, was asked at a debate on Tuesday night whether she was bothered by the practice of her opponent—Scott Brown, the Republican incumbent—of referring to her by her academic title.
“He always calls you ‘Professor Warren,’” said David Gregory, the NBC News journalist who moderated the debate. “Do you think he’s needling you, trying to cast you as an elitist …
September 27, 2012, 1:03 pm
New Obama Ads Tout Goal of Cutting Tuition and Attack Romney on Pell Grants
As part of a two-minute campaign advertisement released on Thursday, President Obama outlines an economic plan, called “a new economic patriotism,” that includes his pledge to reduce college tuition and expand federal student aid.
Speaking directly to a camera, Mr. Obama says that the United States will remain competitive by ”training two million Americans with the job skills they need at our community colleges, cutting the growth of tuition in half, and expanding student aid so more Americans can afford it.”
Mr. Obama first made those promises this month in his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.
He said in that speech that the 50-percent reduction in tuition growth would occur over a decade but offered no details about how to achieve such a goal.
Earlier this year Mr. Obama proposed basing a college’s receipt of federal student aid on whether it…
September 21, 2012, 3:29 pm
In New Ad for Hispanic Voters, Romney Hits Obama on Soaring Tuition and Student Debt
Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign released a Spanish-language ad on Friday that blames President Obama and Democrats for rising tuition and high student-loan debt.
“Four years ago, Hispanics hoped Democrats would improve education,” the ad’s narrator says. “The reality is that more than 75 percent of the population thinks that college is not accessible, now that tuition costs have increased 25 percent under the Democrats and student debt is a trillion dollars.”
The advertisement uses footage of Mr. Obama’s promising “a historic commitment to education” and saying, “I want you to hold me accountable.”
The narrator concludes: ”On education, Obama and the Democrats have failed our children.”
The Obama campaign had previously, in an an advertisement last month, attacked Mr. Romney on the issue of college affordability, painting him as out of touch with students’ concerns…
September 7, 2012, 1:12 am
Student Aid Is a Recurring Theme as Obama Outlines Plans for a Second Term
Charlotte, N.C.—As he formally accepted his party’s nomination for a second term as president, Barack Obama framed this year’s election as a fundamental choice on important issues, including access to higher education.
President Obama, shown onstage with former President Bill Clinton at the convention on Wednesday, wove references to the importance of providing student aid into several parts of his acceptance speech on Thursday night. (Photo by Douglas Graham, CQ Roll Call, Getty)
In his 38-minute speech on Thursday night, Mr. Obama told an arena brimming to its legal capacity here that “no family should have to set aside a college acceptance letter because they don’t have the money.”
Mr. Obama listed as one of his achievements the end of the federal bank-based lending program, a move he said…
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