Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have made higher education a large part of their campaign, but Republican candidates have lagged behind in presenting an alternative policy approach.
The Republican lag on higher education, along with their tendency to ignore issues important to millennials during the GOP debates, could threaten their youth appeal and sink them during the general election.
Marco Rubio is the only candidate who realizes that. His campaign site offers his vision “for overhauling and modernizing higher education,” where he calls for a “disruption” of America’s education system. On the campaign trail, he references his struggle to repay his student loans. His plan wants to simplify and codify federal aid and how students apply, make higher education information easier to access, use income-based repayment as the standard for federal student loans, reform accreditation, and expand vocational education as an alternative to traditional higher education, among other proposals.
The merits of those ideas can be debated, but Rubio has established an alternative to Clinton’s “New College Compact” and Sanders’ pledge to make college “tuition free and debt free.”
The rest of the Republican field has yet to offer a plan for higher education.