The nation is experiencing one of the greatest mobilization efforts ever seen for a midterm election. And young voters, as a result of their rising turnout rates in recent cycles, are increasingly becoming the target of those efforts. With voter registration deadlines fast approaching in many states, get-out-the-vote groups should take an additional look at the highly mobile college population and take advantage of a little-known federal voter registration law that helps them register to vote.
Tucked away in the Higher Education Act is a requirement that colleges and universities make an effort to help students register to vote by distributing voter registration applications by email or by paper (if distributed by email, the email must be solely dedicated to voter registration). Schools that do not do so risk losing millions in federal funding.
An estimated six to eight million part-and full-time students in 2010 are unregistered, according to a recent op-ed by Douglas Hess and Steven Rosenfeld: "Compliance with the HEA could easily facilitate the registration of hundreds of thousand of new, young voters and update the registrations of an equal number."
Registration deadlines start kicking in soon: the first few states stop accepting new registrations next Monday, October 4. So, it is imperative that schools take this opportunity to follow the law by reminding their students that time is running out if they want to register to vote in another historic election this November.
Schools and voter registration groups should:
Send an email to all students with voter registration forms as a link or a PDF attachment, and provide them with the deadline;
Remind students to print and mail their voter registration forms (unless they live in states that provide a completely online voter registration service);
Also provide the link to the national voter registration form (for out-of-state or commuting students to use); and
Continue to supplement voter registration emails with in-class registration or voter registration tables.
Click here to see a list of voter registration deadlines. If your state’s deadline is several weeks away, consider sending one email now and another the week before the deadline. (Schools in six states are exempt from this law: Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.)
When Congress passed the health care bill, with it came a momentous education reform. Signed into law by President Barack Obama, its intention was to help relieve the ever-rising burden imposed by soaring college fees and tuition rates.
This reform was funded by ending a government subsidy to big banks in the business of student loans. Money for poor people to attend college was expanded. Money was also saved by ending these government subsidies.
Under the previous system, the government ensured that student lenders would always make money; if students defaulted on their loans, the government would pay the money to the student lenders. In a CBS 60 minutes report, think tank expert Michael Dannenberg characterized this as:
a socialist-like system," he says. "It's not as if this private entity is assuming any risks. No, no, no. The law makes sure that this so-called private entity has virtually no risk."
Unfortunately for students, this lucrative government-funded industry did relatively little to benefit them.
The American Dream is perhaps our most powerful and enduring story. Through booms and busts, we insist (oftentimes in the face of overwhelmingly contrary evidence) that anyone who is willing to work hard can succeed. To the extent that the American Dream is a reality, it is due in large part to our secondary education system and the patchwork of loans, scholarships, and grants available for students. As sky-rocketing rates of student debt show us, though, these tools for expanding access to secondary education need retuning. There is talk of reform in Washington but, in a story that has become all too familiar, large financial institutions are standing in the way, protecting their profits at the expense of young people’s hopes and dreams.
A few months ago the House of Representatives passed the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, a meaningful reform of the way student loans are dealt with.
In my mind, this bill constitutes one of the Obama administration's most important accomplishments.
To understand why, provided hereafter is an explanation of what the bill does. In recent years, the cost for college has increased tremendously, to the point where total expenses exceed per capita American income. Therefore the federal government encourages banks to loan money to students. These loans are guaranteed and subsidized by the government.
No wonder we're all drowning in debt. Over the past 30 years, a college degree has become increasingly necessary for anyone who hopes to earn a middle-class standard of living. Yet over the same period of time, the cost of tuition and fees at public four-year universities has increased ten times faster than the median family income for families with children. That's a crisis of stagnating wages as well as a problem of soaring college costs. Either way, something's got to give.
At the Drum Major Institute, we've been making that point for years (see, for example, former DMI Fellow Maureen Lane's substantial body of work on higher education as a route out of poverty), but the statistics never cease to amaze me. The effort to afford higher education is the essence of the middle-class squeeze. So it makes an excellent subject for Vice President Joe Biden's Middle-Class Task Force.
When the task force convened for its third meeting in St. Louis last week, they followed the now-familiar format. They issued a staff report that defines the problem as the administration sees it; highlights what the administration is already doing to address it; and lays out a potential future path without committing to any new policy initiatives.
The staff report captures the problem beautifully and sets precisely the right goals for the Administration. "The ability to afford a college education without being buried in debt is an important aspiration and a legitimate expectation... for any family in America...The President is committed to making sure that every student has the opportunity to earn a postsecondary credential or degree." So far so good.
The round up of existing accomplishments includes an array of impressive first steps. The value of the maximum Pell Grant is up, and the President wants to shield funding from the vicissitudes of the annual appropriations process; the stimulus includes an expanded tax credit for college tuition; finally, the President's budget proposes to shift student lending away from the pork-laden program to subsidize private lenders and back toward the more efficient Federal Direct Loan program.
The task force is less inspiring when it comes time to suggest next steps. Since the report states that "the Obama administration does not officially endorse all of these ideas, but the task force views them as worth of further analysis" we might expect some expansive thinking. And there are some good - if hazy - ideas in there: bolster community colleges, improve "529" college savings plans, help states cope with economic downturns without cutting college funding. The most intriguing idea involves enabling graduates to pay back their loans at a fixed percentage of their income, so people who pursue less lucrative careers aren't crushed by debt. Still, none of this quite matches the magnitude of the problem.
The reality is, the nation's public colleges and universities have raised tuition and shifted costs from the states onto students and their families in good economic times as well as bad. A critical part of the story about rising public college costs is tremendous public disinvestment from higher education. The policy not only undermines the middle class but harms the nation's economic competitiveness. To reverse course, the federal government should consider how to help states renew their commitment to public colleges and universities. The middle class depends on it.
The Arkansas Progress Team began organizing three months ago to bring new leadership, ideas, and membership to the Arkansas Young Democrats by focusing on progressive offline and online grassroots organizing. Their three main goals are to increase membership (check this one already), increase fund raising, and increase awareness on the issues important to Young Democrats. On Saturday, April 18th, over 200 Young Democrats turned out to vote at the State Capitol Building and delivered the Arkansas Progress Team a victory.
Left to Right: Eric Bell (Sec/Treas), Jonathan Spinks (Committeeman), and Chris Burks (President)
We're worried about the potential for massive unemployment, right? Most estimates put it at 8% unemployment next year, with more dire predictions pegging it at up to 15%.
The problem of unemployment might be especially bad among young people, many of whom have no experience or past skills to market, just potential. Worse still, with unemployment comes crime.
That's why I propose as part of stimulus that the federal government make community college enrollment free for the next 2 years and subsidize state universities; in exchange we ask these schools to increase enrollments and create buzz in their local communities spurring students to go to college to get an AA or BS or MS degree.
In 1901, an army psychologist named Carl Brigham developed the Scholastic Achievement Test for Northeastern colleges as a mechanism to eliminate test bias between people from different socio-economic backgrounds. The modern university system in America, including most of our great research institutions, were founded around that same era, such as MIT and Johns Hopkins - and universities like Harvard reconfigured themselves along somewhat more meritocratic and scientific lines. Pretty soon, a swarm of Jews began infiltrating, and 'character' remained a critical filter into the feeder to the American elite.
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