I know we haven’t really discussed any of the current presidential candidates’ higher education opinions too much, but I recently came across an article in which a staff member of the Trump campaign gave a brief outline of what they would do about higher education. First, they would significantly alter how student loans are handled. He said that Trump plans to eliminate Federal government loans to students, make colleges have a stake in the risk of student loans and (here’s where the Trump-ness kicks in) make it harder for liberal arts majors to get student loans.
First of all, I believe removing the the federal government from student loans is a terrible idea. In the personal finance course I’m taking this semester I learned that federal student loans are actually more advantageous for students than loans from private institutions. Federal loans have fixed interest rates while private interests rates could potentially increase, casing the student to incur more debt. Also, federal loans tend to be cheaper overall. Second of all, how could the Trump campaign think of cutting loans to liberal arts students?! They claim they plan to do this because liberal arts majors have a smaller chance of getting a decently paid job after graduation. Clearly, they don’t know what we know about the liberal arts. As we discussed, such an education gives you many of the skills that employers are actually looking for (problem solving ability, critical thinking etc.). If anything it can increase ones chances of getting a good job! Although, to be fair I do think he means well here. He doesn’t want to let students incur large amounts of debt without the chance to pay it back. Still, he might mean well, but he appears to be a bit ignorant of the true circumstances of the situation.
Another point spoken about in the article is Trump’s views on free speech. The Trump campaign representative mentioned how the they believe free speech is being restricted on colleges campuses. He mentioned how the campaign has noticed that people seem to get outraged when a student writes something like “Trump 2016” somewhere near or on campus. The representative then went on to say that colleges need to ensure that all students are given the right to express their opinion even if most people strongly disagree with them. In my opinion, the Trump campaign made (an almost) good point here. As we discussed in class, free speech is absolutely crucial to receiving a good education. Hearing other people’s thoughts and opinions can really give a student a chance to better develop their own opinions as well as give them the ability to appreciate and respect an other’s opinion that don’t actually share. So in that regard the Trump campaign made a good point. However, based on the Republican debates and many news clips I think it’s clear that Trump takes this idea too far. It’s one thing to expect people to respect opinions they do not agree it, but it’s another to expect people to be okay with you hurling a barrage insults at them. The latter case is not constructive to higher education and would probably even lead to polarization between groups of students.
I tried to keep this post about my assessment of the Trump campaign’s stance on higher education so I do apologize if I turned this into a bit of a rant. Anyway, feel free to comment and share your thoughts about the article. If anyone happens to disagree with me on these issues I’d actually really like to hear what you think (after all, hearing an opposing opinion could be eye opening)
So I really enjoyed the article and your post about it made for a very good summary with interesting analysis. I agree with you on pretty much everything you said. I was really intrigued by the point you made about the federal government loans being more constant with its loan interest than a private bank would. I hadn’t really thought about that and just considered the fact that they tend to be cheaper. As for the comments on liberal arts majors, it always gos back to the first question we asked during day one, what is the purpose of higher education? As of now, purly from what we have read and seen over articles from the class or from student blog posts, it seems that current republican representitves feel that higher education is job training. And that is where I may disagree with your post a little bit in that, when people try to defend the liberal arts majors from attacks such as “you won’t get a job,” often you hear replies such as the one you wrote concerning the skills learned that empolyers are looking for. But why can’t it just be about learning skills? I feel that the rehtoric people defending liberal arts majors have gotten themselves into just reinforces this notion of college as job training. But all this goes back to the transition from federal loans to private bank loans. Because unfortunatly college is expensive and banks are looking out for their business (which we can’t blame them for). But ultimiatley, I believe it comes down to state and federal policy that will really allow for citizens to make higher education what they want it to be. Leaving most of the student loans in the hands of the banks just makes it another business, more so than it already is.