Rick Santorum Aligns Himself With For-Profit Colleges, Setting Up Sharp Divide With Obama
Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum firmly believes that for-profit colleges play an important role in meeting the training needs of business.
Chris Kirkham Posted: 02/23/2012 4:18 pm
As Republican presidential hopeful Rick Santorum steps up accusations that the Obama administration stymies business with unnecessary regulations, he has seized upon a new prop: the for-profit college industry.
"The president has had a war on private education [ http://www.freep.com/article/20120219/OPINION05/202190367 ]," Santorum told a crowd at the Detroit Economic Club last week. "He believes that private sector schools are somehow evil and they're abusive, and his Education Department has done everything they could to make it harder for them to compete for loans and other things and to stay in business."
Santorum has effectively injected himself into a national debate over the legitimacy of the for-profit institutions, which derive as much as 90 percent of their revenues from federal student loans and Pell grants, but have left students shouldering huge debt burdens that have led to high rates of default.
Santorum also said in Detroit last week that, in comparison to Obama, he has a "very, very different attitude" toward for-profit colleges and would "make sure they are available and around and funded like any other school to be able to pick up and help the business community meet their training needs."
For his part, Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, told the Ames Tribune in Iowa [ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wF_9r6-DLTw ] in December that for-profit colleges could be a solution to addressing the rising cost of higher education. "Competition is a great source of invention and improvement, and I see the advent of for-profit institutions of higher learning, which I know the president and his supporters don't like," Romney said. "I actually like the idea of competition in higher education."
The two Republican candidates' statements are likely to pique the interest of for-profit college industry executives, who have historically pumped millions into congressional and presidential elections.
So far, Romney has far outpaced Santorum in campaign donations from for-profit colleges executives and political action committees. Romney has received more than $52,000 in contributions from the industry so far, including $11,000 from committees or executives of the Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, according to a Huffington Post analysis of campaign filings.
Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, has received only $750 from executives tied to for-profit colleges, according to the latest filings.
Obama's campaign has received more than $6,000 from for-profit college executives and employees.
"Next year's elections could drastically change the political environment in Washington and around the country," the for-profit college trade group [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/17/for-profit-college-chiefs-lake-tahoe_n_1283331.html ], the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, declared in a recent presentation to executives. "It will be important for us to monitor the next two election cycles (2012 & 2014) to identify ways to insert our messaging and make a significant impact on targeted races."
Santorum has also criticized the public education system and prestigious universities such as Harvard -- institutions that he called "indoctrination centers for the left," according to David Halperin, a senior fellow at United Republic, a nonprofit group that aims to counter the influence of well-heeled special interest groups in politics. "Santorum has also taken the time to beat up on traditional colleges and universities," Halperin wrote in a blog post for United Republic [ http://www.republicreport.org/2012/santorum-for-profit-colleges/ ], "a tack consistent with conservative talking points, but also presumably appealing to embattled for-profit college execs."
Because the for-profit college industry is so dependent on federal dollars, executives and lobbyists have become very attuned to regulatory developments in Washington. During the George W. Bush administration, the for-profit college industry successfully lobbied the Department of Education and a Republican-led Congress to relax regulations [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/john-boehner-for-profit-colleges_n_909589.html ] crafted in the early 1990s to root out abuses that led to massive default rates by students from these schools on government loans.
After the same problems began to resurface in recent years, the Obama administration proposed its stricter regulations. If too many students were unable to pay down loan balances, certain programs would be cut off from federal student aid.
Santorum argued along the same lines last week in favor of for-profit colleges. "They are going to be the principal tool, along with community colleges, to respond to this -- what I believe will be exploding demand for skilled and semi-skilled workers to do the jobs of the future," he said.
"If we don't find a way for the for-profit sector to expand the size and delivery of post-secondary education in this country, we will not get it done," Steve Gunderson, chief executive of the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities, said in an interview last week. "With the federal and state budget cuts, there is simply no way."
Yet for-profit colleges on average end up charging students tuition that's nearly twice the amount at public four-year universities and nearly five times that of public community colleges, according to Department of Education data analyzed by the College Board [ http://trends.collegeboard.org/downloads/College_Pricing_2011.pdf ]. That leads many more students into debt at for-profit colleges: About 1 in 5 students at community colleges take out loans to pay for tuition, whereas 4 out of 5 students at for-profit two- and four-year schools must borrow to pay for education.
A spokeswoman for Romney, Andrea Saul, told HuffPost last month that Romney supports a "level playing field for different types of schools held accountable for their results," and that "to increase access and affordability, we must support the availability of a full portfolio of college options, public and private, traditional and on-line."
A spokesman for Santorum did not respond to requests for comment.
Laura Hibbard The Huffington Post First Posted: 02/23/2012 2:10 pm Updated: 02/23/2012 2:54 pm
Tanya Ditty, a Georgia teacher and the state director of Concerned Women for American of Georgia, spoke against a Georgia bill this week that would ban discrimination against LGBT state employees -- like public school teachers.
In her testimony, Ditty cited cross dressers potentially using restrooms for the opposite sex as possible place for exploitation:
"There are 23 sexual orientations that fit under this definition and if this bill became law, then what we would be protecting for public employees is not only heterosexuality, bisexuality, pedophilia, transsexuality, transvestitism, I'm not going to read them all. Voyeurism, exhibitionism, feetism, zoophilia, necrophilia, klismaphilia and the list goes on. I teach in the public school system and I wonder if this would impact the public school system. And we have parents who bring their kids to school every day and expect the school to protect them. And what's going to protect our children if someone that is a pedophiliac comes in and gets a teaching job, is a bus driver, is a custodian, and they can be people that just want to prey on people and they will be protected with this law."
The bill was sponsored by Democratic state Rep. Karla Drenner, who was the first openly homosexual legislator to serve in the Georgia General Assembly.
Ditty, the bill's only vocal opposition, said the motion would not protect children's safety.
"There are people that just want to prey on children, and they would have to be given a job," she said, according to the Chronicle.
Although the committee voted 3-2 to table the legislation, Drenner believes it won't be revived.
Meanwhile, during the same period in the campaign four years ago, President Obama held a rally at the massive XL Center in Hartford, Connecticut that attracted a few more people (the center is much smaller, with a capacity of about 16,000). A photo of the February 4th, 2008 rally via the blog Levers and Pulleys [ http://leversandpulleys.com/blog/archive/obama-hartford-xl-civic-center/ ]
Republican leaders are eager to get to race against Obama
By David Chalian | The Ticket – 15 hrs ago
[shucks, can't show image.. can anyone? .. if so please show-and-tell] Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval at the National Governors Association meeting in Washington, Saturday, Feb. 25, 2012. …
WASHINGTON, D.C.--The ongoing race for the Republican presidential nomination appears to be causing heartburn among some party leaders who are eager to start taking on a president who has begun to feel the political benefit of a rehabilitating economy and a divisive GOP primary process.
"I definitely would like to see it finished before the convention. I think it is a good thing for the Republican Party to line up behind one candidate," Gov. Brian Sandoval, R-Nevada, said as a meeting of the nation's governors was getting underway here Saturday.
Sandoval also said that the 20 primary debates will help get his party's eventual nominee battle tested for the fall, but that the negative campaigning among the candidates provides helpful material to President Obama's reelection efforts.
"I think it is going to be healthy and strong for somebody to emerge so that they can start contrasting themselves with the president," he added.
"It would be better for our general election prospects if more time and focus was on Obama's policies and the failures of those policies," said former Mississippi Governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour.
"There's still time for that. But, would it improve our prospects earlier, more greatly if this was going on now? Of course, it would."
Gov. Mitch Daniels, R-Indiana, who once again said there was no chance he would reconsider his decision to forgo a presidential campaign, said a shorter nomination process would better serve the party in the future.
"I don't know anyone who thinks it is optimal," Daniels said of the process in which the candidates are currently engaged. "It's inevitable, at least temporarily, that they will get all chewed up and dinged up by the way we've chosen to do this," he added before expressing optimism that things can change swiftly when a nominee emerges.
Gov. Tom Corbett, R-Penn., also said it would certainly be helpful for his party to begin a one-on-one debate with President Obama sooner rather than later. Bowing to the reality that it still may be a while before a presumptive nominee emerges, Corbett urged the presidential contenders to keep the conversation on the most pressing issue on the minds of the voters.
"I'd like to see the candidates focusing much more from here on out on the economy," Corbett said.
In recent weeks the dominant conversation in the campaign has centered around social issues such as contraception and abortion, causing concern among some Republicans that critical independent voters, .. http://www.masslive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/02/jeb_bush_republicans_troubling.html [wow, the link was 9 lines not opened] .. who are less likely to be motivated by those issues, may turn away from the party.
"The problem that I would worry about is that our side might not offer a bold enough, specific enough, constructive enough, and I would say inclusive enough alternative to America," Daniels said.
Only a handful of Republican governors have chosen sides in the volatile presidential race. The vast majority of them appear content to avoid navigating the tricky politics of competing interests that inevitably come with an endorsement.
"I'm ready for it to be over tomorrow," said Romney backer Gov. Bob McDonnell, R-Virginia who endorsed last month. "I would love for Mitt to have this thing done on Super Tuesday. There is a path for Super Tuesday or shortly after. If he wins Michigan and Arizona has a good Super Tuesday, I think there's a path to it being over or close to over, but the people have to decide."
Of course, a rapid conclusion to the GOP contest looks somewhat unlikely at the moment. Gov. Daniels said one of the reasons he is not planning to make an endorsement in the race is because he believes the competition could still be in full swing by the time the Indiana primary rolls around in early May and he'd like to be a good host to all the candidates.
More popular Yahoo! News stories:
• In Michigan, Romney faces challenges in his home state .. insert ..
DETROIT— One building away from where Mitt Romney was set to deliver his economic speech today at Ford Field, a cadre of American-made cars sat atop a parking garage here in downtown Detroit each displaying one huge letter perched on a windshield, together spelling out the phrase, "ROMNEY LET DETROIT GO BANKRUPT."
[...]
Polls continue to show Romney and Santorum leading in Michigan, a major reason why Gingrich is largely ignoring the state in favor of campaigning for Super Tuesday votes in states that will vote Mar. 6, including his home state of Georgia. Paul's campaign previously said the congressman was unlikely to campaign in Michigan, but as of Friday afternoon he had four Michigan events planned prior to Tuesday's vote. .. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/michigan-romney-faces-challenges-home-state-202805535.html
• Twitter lights up about the Romney Cadillac fleet .. [forget that link, too boring to be so long.]
Aside: Is there a Yahoo! 'on purpose policy' to make some copy/paste links tooo long, IF you don't open them? Probably just one of those things, as one of the opened links was some 9 lines long, too.
Thank you to Yahoo! for having 2/3 short of the 'more popular' links amenable to change. Seriously .. chuckle .. ha ..
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