Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Reflection 4 - Hillary for President

Looking at the different candidates for the Presidential election and their views on changes in higher education, I'm still sure my vote will go to Hillary. After looking at her direct website http://hillaryclinton.com/issues/education/ I have decided I really agree with her stand points on higher education. A few of the things I agree with are; increasing the federal pell grant, challenging selective schools to accept more lower income students and challenging colleges to keep down their costs and tracking their progress with an online college cost calculator. Increasing the federal pell grant will help students get more money for college from the government. Student loans are incredibly hard to get in the first place and when a student achieves a loan they have to pay it back for years after graduation, because of all the built up interest. I can't take out any loans by myself so i know that an increase in the pell grant would help me and others like me. Second, I know a lot of people would really love going to schools that are more selective with their admittance of lower income people, but they are turned down because of that exact thing. I believe a change in the way students are accepted into colleges selective or not, would be a major improvment in the higher education system overall because sometimes students are turned down for unfair reasons and I think that should really be cleared up. I also think that some schools accept the wrong people just because they want to meet a quota and I think this idea can help schools with that problem. Students should be accepted to colleges and Universities becasue they fit into what the colleges values are, not because the school needs more students. Finally, I absolutely love the idea of an online cost calculator to monitor the tuition raises in colleges. Going to college is so expensive these days that a lot of people can't afford to go in the first place. If some sort of cap was set on tuition costs at colleges a lot more students would attend and a lot more students would stay at their colleges until graduation, because they would be able to afford it. This would make graduation rates increase and make a college degree a little more attainable, which is becoming more and more necessary in today's world. Overall, I think Hillary has a win, win plan for higher education, because as i said before she has a way to help future students get more money to go to school and she wants to make it easier for students to get into their school of choice.

1 comment:

jamie said...

I like how you were able to make a choice on this matter. Frankly I think it is difficult to make this choice since there is a lack of info, overall, on these candidates and higher education. I like the fact that Clinton has a distinct background with her supporting the educational process.