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.
October 17, 2012, 3:33 pm
Tracing the Evolution of Romney’s Position on Pell Grants
In the second presidential debate, on Tuesday at Hofstra University, in New York, the Republican candidate Mitt Romney’s statements in favor of increasing Pell Grants surprised some reporters. The New York Times’s Richard Pérez-Peña called Mr. Romney’s assertion that he wanted “to make sure we keep our Pell Grant program growing” a “new position for him.”
Mr. Romney’s previous remarks indicate that he has been moving gradually toward that position over the course of the campaign.
- During the Republican primaries, Mr. Romney was all but mute on higher-education issues. While his opponents made mention of higher education during the debates, Mr. Romney did not. His campaign Web site at the time did not mention Pell Grants.
- In the months that led up to his nomination, Mr. Romney commended Rep. Paul Ryan’s controversial budget plan, which Democrats have criticized…
October 17, 2012, 3:00 pm
Youngest Voters Favor Obama but Are Uneasy With Politics, Poll Finds
On the eve of the next presidential election, young Americans are showing far less enthusiasm for voting—and much greater skepticism about the political process—than they did four years ago, according to a new poll from Harvard University’s Institute of Politics.
Nearly two-thirds of the 18- to 29-year-olds in the poll, released on Wednesday, said they were registered to vote. Fifty-two percent said they thought President Obama would be re-elected, while 15 percent thought he would lose. They overwhelmingly favored the incumbent on such matters as the economy, immigration reform, health-care policy, and foreign policy.
But young voters also indicated a clear uneasiness with the electoral process, and with Congress. Disenchantment was strongest among voters between 18 and 24 years old. Four years ago, 43 percent of voters in that age group said they were politically active; now …
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, 2:41 pm
Presidential Candidates Are Urged to Strengthen Support for Public Colleges
The State Higher Education Executive Officers, a nonpartisan association, has written an open letter asking President Obama and his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, to strengthen federal support for public colleges.
In the letter, the association urges the candidates to sustain the amount of federal money for research as well as need-based student aid.
It’s not all about the money, though. State higher-education leaders also want the next president to continue to emphasize college completion as a national priority, and to support the development of clear educational standards from elementary school through college.
Higher education, the letter says, will be a key player in finding solutions to the difficult economic, environmental, and health-care challenges the country faces. “Without a stronger education system,” the letter says, “we will lack the human capital and technological…
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 3, 2012, 1:42 pm
Tracking the Debate on Twitter: Southern Cal Tool Mines Political Sentiments in Real Time
Twenty-five thousands tweets per minute. That was roughly the volume of campaign-related Twitter messages posted during the height of the political conventions, according to researchers at the University of Southern California. Tonight’s presidential debate will unleash another Twitter tsunami.
So how do you make sense of it all?
A team of social scientists and computer scientists at the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab has developed technology that attempts to automatically track the sentiments of political tweets. The service, available here, displays the relative number of “positive” and “negative” tweets about each candidate, the overall volume of tweets pertaining to each campaign, and a scrolling list of the most positive and negative tweets.
The promise is that machines will mine Twitter to quickly detect changes in campaigns, before anyone has time to do polling and analysis…
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 …
October 2, 2012, 12:30 pm
Romney Says He Would Not Deport Illegal Students Who Hold Special Permits
Ahead of Wednesday’s first presidential debate, Mitt Romney has said that he would not repeal President Obama’s new policy granting a two-year hold on deportation for many young illegal immigrants, The Denver Post reports. After months of refusing to answer the question of how he would deal with the estimated 1.7 million young people who qualify for the Obama administration’s policy, Mr. Romney has now said that he would honor the special work permits until he could enact permanent reform.
“The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid. I’m not going to take something that they’ve purchased,” Mr. Romney told the Post. “Before those visas have expired we will have the full immigration-reform plan that I’ve proposed.”
In June, President Obama’s decision to
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…
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