Over Fall Break, the U hosted a debate between Republican Mia Love and Democrat Doug Owens, candidates vying for the seat occupied by the retiring Rep. Jim Matheson (D-Utah) in Utah’s 4th congressional district. The debate highlighted the candidates’ views on education. This election season, resident U students should closely follow the intersection of politics with education policies that directly affect them.
The 4th district includes a substantial part of Salt Lake County, so many resident U students belong to the electorate. According to opinion polls, the race is relatively close and has been tightening, with Love maintaining the lead. If elected, Mia Love will become the first African-American woman to represent the GOP in Congress. The close race signals a chance for Utah Dems to maintain a national political voice. Love’s gender and race may give Owens a political advantage, considering the conservative majority in the 4th district electorate.
The main contention in the debate centered on educational policies. Owens, taking a middle-of-the-road stance (ostensibly to court the electorate in a race rated “Safe Republican” by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics), was critical of Love’s prior-stated positions regarding education spending. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, she sent out a mailer during her 2012 race against Matheson that included elimination of student loans and Pell Grants among proposed cuts.
When pressed about the mailer in the media scrum following the debate, Love went against her earlier position: “I am not going to say that I’m getting rid of student loans … what does that do [for] people that need to have some assistance? I am concerned about the unlimited flow of federal funds going into student loans, driving up the cost of tuition.”
I asked her if she had a position on student loan forgiveness. She said that she did not, but followed with: “I think that it’s important for us to have some personal responsibility and … when you borrow something [to be able to] pay it back.”
While Love may not be forthcoming about her actual opinion on education cuts, her post-debate commentary hits the nail on the head as to the mechanism of rising costs in higher education. Easy access to loan money for a growing consumer base, an ever-more-entrenched paradigm viewing college education as a workforce ‘necessity’ and a stagnant market, where extant institutions are protected from new competition by a broken accreditation system, has created a price wedge.
The increased availability of student loan money and the lack of responsibility on the end of universities has seen the excess used to pad the pockets of administrators (a study from Institute for Policy Studies correlates increases in student debt and state university administrator pay) and re-directed into what are essentially marketing projects. There’s a reason workhorse buildings like OSH don’t ever seem to get renovated while much-discussed new construction projects are a constant certainty on the U campus. The result is an increasing disconnect in the price of higher education and its end product.
While Love remarked that “free markets” were the solution to elitist education, Owens articulately argued a moderate position in favor of federal spending for education, and he suggested a program for using the final year of high school to start students’ college education. Neither candidate spoke to the predatory nature of the current loans system, university administrator pay or the accreditation system.
The issues surrounding the upcoming race are important for students to consider. Resident U students should familiarize themselves with the relevant candidates on issues that directly affect them prior to the upcoming Nov. 4 election.