Higher education economist extraordinaire Richard Vedder asks whether the cost of higher education will be an issue this campaign season and thinks that Barack Obama is getting his ducks in a row to make it one. The well-publicized summit earlier this week with college presidents was, he thinks, more about politics than substance.
Focus on this issue may well be a way of galvanizing the youth vote while appearing post-partisan. Everyone thinks that colleges and universities have little or no pricing discipline and more than a few are worrying about the next bubble to burst .
The Obama Administration has largely spoken about access and affordability, both of which seem appealing . . . on the surface. Remember, however, that those were virtually the same concerns that health care reform was meant to address.
I received an email a few days ago inviting me to join a group called “Educators with Newt.” It goes without saying that I haven’t yet signed on. But I hope that the Republican nominee—whoever he is—is prepared to join this fight in a sophisticated and compelling way. I know that it’s tempting to say that we folks in higher ed—having been in the tank for Obama—deserve whatever we get from him and don’t deserve any consideration from the Republicans, who have largely been objects of our ridicule and hostility. But if genuine intellectual diversity is to survive in the small pockets where it currently exists, there has to be sustained thought and attention on the Republican side.
