Edwards Taps His Working-Class Childhood to Focus on Issues of Opportunity and Equality

The former senator has made college access a central part of his presidential campaign

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By KARIN FISCHER

None of John Edwards's children graduated last May from Greene Central High School, in rural eastern North Carolina, but the former U.S. senator was as proud as any parent.

Sixty-one percent of the 171 cap-and-gowned seniors were heading for college in the fall, an astonishingly high number in a blue-collar community where most young people have viewed their post-high school options as factory or farm.

And a program started by Mr. Edwards will help pay their way to a higher education.

Dubbed College for Everyone, the privately financed plan covers a year's tuition, books, and fees at a North Carolina public college for Greene County students who have completed college-preparatory courses, stayed out of trouble, and agreed to work at least 10 hours a week while enrolled.

"The chance to go to college meant everything in my life, and I want every young person to have that chance," Mr. Edwards said at the graduation, where he announced that he would take the two-year-old pilot program national and make it a centerpiece of his bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Few contenders this presidential season have made higher education as fundamental to their candidacy as has Mr. Edwards. He also calls for simplifying federal financial aid, overhauling the student-loan system, and training more teachers to work in public schools in educationally underserved communities. For Mr. Edwards, who grew up making do in small, Southern towns, the issue of college access feeds into a broader theme of his campaign, that of providing economic, educational, and social opportunity to all Americans.

"I think it's fair to say that Senator Edwards brought real questions of economic inequality into the political arena in a profound way," says Gene R. Nichol, president of the College of William and Mary and a former dean of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's law school, from which both Mr. Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth, graduated. "He has drawn attention to these issues."

First in His Family

Mr. Edwards grew up in mill towns in North Carolina and South Carolina, the son of a textile worker. His family was not poor, but there was not much money to spare. His parents had to take a bank loan pay the hospital bill when he was born.

Although his father worked his way up to middle management, he was passed over for promotions in favor of workers with college degrees, Mr. Edwards has said.

Mr. Edwards attended North Carolina State University, graduating in 1974 with a degree in textile technology, a practical fallback in case his plan to become a lawyer failed. The first in his family to earn a bachelor's degree, he worked his way through college.

"There was no way I was going to waste my education when I was paying for it by unloading trucks and working on road crews," he told The Chronicle in 2004. (Mr. Edwards's campaign declined a request for an interview for this article.)

As a lawyer, he gained a national reputation as a tenacious advocate for people who had been injured in workplace or medical accidents. His share of the big money awarded his clients made him a millionaire.

But everything changed when, in 1996, he lost his 16-year-old son, Wade, in a car crash. (The Edwardses have three other children: Cate, a 25-year-old student at Harvard Law School; Emma Claire, 9; and Jack, 7.) A year later, Mr. Edwards, a political novice, jumped into the race for a U.S. Senate seat from North Carolina. He confounded pundits by defeating the Republican incumbent, Lauch Faircloth.

In the minority party for much of his six-year tenure in a bitterly partisan Senate, Mr. Edwards notched few legislative victories. However, in 2000, he was on the short list of vice-presidential candidates considered by Al Gore. In 2004 Mr. Edwards sought the presidency himself.

Getting in the Game

Mr. Edwards first put forward the idea behind College for Everyone during the 2004 campaign. But the concept was not embraced by Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the eventual Democratic nominee, after he chose Mr. Edwards as his running mate.

After their loss that November, Mr. Edwards returned to North Carolina, where he soon set out to put his college-access proposal into practice, if on a smaller scale. He secured private donations to pay for the cost of the scholarships, a total of about $300,000 per year. Over two years, 191 scholarships have been awarded.

Greene County was selected because its income and education levels lag behind those in the rest of the state. Seventy percent of elementary- and secondary-school students in the county qualify for federal free or reduced-price lunch programs, says Steve Mazingo, the school district's superintendent. Just 8 percent of county residents have bachelor's degrees, compared with 23 percent statewide.

Initial results for the pilot version of the program suggest modest gains, with 61 percent of students in the 2006 and 2007 graduating classes enrolling in two- or four-year colleges, up from 54 percent in 2005. More than 75 percent of students from the class of 2006 who went to college completed the first year.

By sending the message that college is an option, regardless of income, says Mr. Mazingo, College for Everyone has provided the "missing piece" in the county's own efforts to improve college-going rates. "To have the first year paid for," he says, "is a way for students who didn't know how to get in the game."

Robert M. Shireman, director of the Institute for College Access and Success, a California-based nonprofit group, has provided feedback to Mr. Edwards and several other presidential candidates on their higher-education proposals. He likes the College for Everyone model because it combines financial assistance with strong academic preparation and counseling. In addition to having to complete required course work, students receive guidance in applying to college and for financial aid.

One of the biggest challenges to expanding the program nationwide, however, is the price tag, which the Edwards campaign has estimated at $8-billion. The candidate has proposed paying for the program by eliminating federal student-loan subsidies to banks and other private lenders and by increasing the tax on capital gains.

But some critics question whether a new government program is necessary. Why not expand current student-aid programs or focus on providing students with better information about existing public and private sources of financial aid?

George C. Leef, director of the John William Pope Center for Public Policy, a Chapel Hill-based research organization that studies college finance, questions the efficacy of proposals like Mr. Edwards's, while noting that they are popular with the middle class.

"Being in favor of more education," says Mr. Leef, "is as easy as being in favor of motherhood and apple pie."

Issues of Inequality

College for Everyone was not the only project Mr. Edwards pursued between his two bids for the presidency. He was contacted by Mr. Nichol, law dean at Chapel Hill at the time, who was interested in having him return to the law school to teach. The two men found a shared passion in exploring issues of economic inequality and poverty. The result was the Center on Poverty, Work, and Opportunity, which was established on the flagship campus in 2005.

From the outset, the program sought to combine academic research with the hands-on experience of those working in the field, says Marion G. Crain, a professor of law who was the center's assistant director under Mr. Edwards.

The center convened panel discussions and brought together scholars and practitioners, most notably in its New Orleans Recovery Initiative, in which North Carolina faculty members work with community groups in the storm-ravaged city on rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Katrina. The center also made use of Mr. Edwards's political connections to attract prominent speakers like John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO.

But Mr. Edwards's political background led to concern among faculty members who felt that university money was going to finance a "front" for another presidential bid, says Ms. Crain, who is now the center's director. The criticism died down over time, she says, after people on the campus saw that Mr. Edwards was "involved in a hands-on way, that this really was his vision."

Officials of the program, along with Mr. Edwards, also tried to separate its work from his political ambitions, she says. He resigned as director of the center in December 2006 and is no longer involved in its work.

Refining His Ideas

Still, Mr. Edwards clearly used his time off from politics after the 2004 campaign to refine his policy positions, says Ferrell Guillory, director of the university's Program on Public Life and a former editorial-page editor of The News & Observer, in Raleigh. This time around, the candidate has offered substantive ideas that are anchored in, but also expand on, his experience growing up in a working-class family, Mr. Guillory says.

For example, he proposes creating a cabinet-level post to fight global poverty, and expanding health-care coverage to all Americans by giving subsidies to uninsured families and extending current federal programs.

The same themes resonate in his broad higher-education platform, which focuses on improving college access by, for example, providing more college counselors to high schools that serve large numbers of low-income students, and simplifying federal financial-aid forms to encourage more students to complete them.

"He is running less on his biography," Mr. Guillory says, "and more on his policy prescriptions."