Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney addresses the audience of the Republican National Convention two weeks ago.
Climbing student loan debt and the runaway cost of tuition may not have taken center stage at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this year, but both sides gave a nod to young voters by mentioning college affordability and job prospects for recent graduates.
This is a shift from the 2008 conventions that largely shied away from the college affordability issue, with then-candidate Barack Obama giving it little mention in his DNC speech and then-Republican nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) staying silent on it altogether.
But college affordability has come to the forefront of national lawmakers’ attention following Congress’ summer debate over how to fund a freeze on some federal student loans rates — just months after reports showed student loan debt approaching $1 trillion.
“Student loans and the financing of higher education is a very important issue,” said Bill Rand, a business professor. “People are seeing the fact that higher education is costing more and more money and they’re wondering whether or not this is where their dollars should actually be spent.”
While Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s shout-out to young voters was brief, it illustrated a contrast to McCain’s approach. Obama took the issue of college affordability a step further, citing it as an important part of the country’s future and using it as one of his focal points.
“No family should have to set aside a college acceptance letter because they don’t have the money. No company should have to look for workers overseas because they couldn’t find any with the right skills here at home. That’s not our future,” Obama said in his DNC speech Thursday.
He added: “I refuse to ask students to pay more for college,” touching on some of his previous statements that a Romney presidency would signal tax cuts for the rich at the expense of federal student loan programs and aid such as Pell Grants.
While Democrats had a strong grasp on the youth vote in 2008, Rand said a slow-growing economy that has been bearing down on young voters and recent graduates has given the GOP an opportunity to exploit that frustration among young voters.
“The GOP is definitely trying to use that to its advantage to try and reach out to younger voters and say ‘Hey look, the Democrats and President Obama haven’t done as well as you think they have,’” Rand said.
In Romney’s speech at the RNC two weeks ago, he took a shot at the ailing economy under Obama to appeal to the 18-to-29 year old voter bloc.
“Every new college graduate thought they’d have a good job by now,” Romney said. “A place of their own. They could start paying back some of their loans and build for the future.”
Some students, such as junior government and politics major Alice Goldberg, said Romney has wavered on issues such as same-sex marriage and health care.
Goldberg said she fears Romney’s positions are empty rhetoric to help him get elected.
“He doesn’t care as much about his actual views,” she said. “He’s a flip-flopper.”
Over the last four years, tuition has gone up and college graduates are still struggling to find jobs. A 2012 Associated Press study determined that 1.5 million recent graduates are either unemployed or underemployed.
Under Obama’s 2008 campaign theme of “change,” he made many promises to move forward from the previous administration.
However, senior government and politics major Matt Parsons said he didn’t hear anything in Obama’s speech Thursday that convinced him he would take the country in the right direction.
“It just seemed like empty fluff to appeal to the masses,” Parsons said.
bach@umdbk.com
