Can You Put a Price on Education?

According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, while more and more Americans are recognizing the value of a college education in today's workforce, an increasing number are fearful that prices may become prohibitively high, preventing qualified students from getting the education they deserve.

Their report, titled, "Squeeze Play: How Parents and the Public Look at Higher Education Today," found that half of Americans believe that a college education is "necessary for success in the workplace," a record high, and up from 31% in 2000. At the same time, 62% believe that many qualified students won't have the opportunity to go to college, up a whopping 17 points from 45% in 1998.

Respondents in the report's poll blamed the colleges themselves for wasteful spending and bloated programs that don't improve the quality of education. "'The public may voice satisfaction with the education that colleges and universities deliver, but there is evidence that this satisfaction with the system as a whole is beginning to erode.' says Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education."

Invoking the American dream, Callan continued, "There is a growing concern that some colleges and universities may no longer reflect what the American public has valued most about higher education: a commitment to opportunity and quality for young people."

Stand Up, Be Heard!

Health Care?
The Environment?
College Affordability?
Creating Jobs?
The War?

MSNBC wants to know what issue matters most to you and what you propose to do about it. The network just launched a “Gut Check America: Stand and Be Counted” campaign where winning submissions will be aired the first week of every month leading up to the election. Get your story out there and make the voice of young voters heard!

Which Candidate Are You "Friends" With?

According to data collected by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 37% of the adult population, or roughly 75 million Americans, used the internet as a resource for the 2004 election. 18% of registered voters listed the internet as their primary source of information, a number that is up 7% from data compiled for the 2000 election. Uses for internet listed by the survey included things like discussing candidates through e-mail, getting news and information on candidates, volunteering time and donating money to campaigns. (For more info check this out.)

No one uses the internet quite like the nation's young people. With the rise of Facebook, YouTube, AIM, and MySpace, young people more then ever are using the internet to communicate with peers and voice their opinions. A survey conducted by the Harvard IOP found that an astonishing 82% of students at four-year colleges and 62% of non-college 18-24 year olds had been on Facebook in a two day period. Of those with Facebook pages, 41% say they have used Facebook to promote a political candidate, event or idea.

Taking note of this growing trend, candidates now use the sites to help with their campaigns. All of the major 2008 candidates have set-up MySpace pages that are being used both to help get their name out but also to give their campaigns a more personal feel.

While there’s no way to predict the impact the internet will have in the 2008 election, it can only be assumed that the internet will play some type of role in the selection of our future president.

Ohio Unveils the "Ultimate Civics Lesson"

Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner of Ohio has developed "the ultimate civics lesson" where high school graduates will receive more than their diploma on graduation day. In a mission to increase youth voting, students will recieve packets that include voter registration forms as well as information about how to cast an absentee ballot and become a poll worker. While the program will run in only five counties this spring, the initiative signals the beginning of a more widespread effort that Brunner plans to take state-wide by the 2008 presidential election if initial tests prove successful.

Nationally close to 60% of 18-29 year olds were registered to vote in 2004, while over 80% of these registered young voters voted. Though Brunner claims she'd be content with even a 10% increase in young registered voters in Ohio, she says she'd "be happier with 25%."

Stay Informed!

Check out this site for up-to-date information on the 2008 presidential candidates. From candidate interviews to general party news, this site can serve as a resource to help with your up-coming primary and presidential voting decisions!

Reality TV Meets Politics

Drawing on the success of shows like FOX's American Idol and NBC's America’s Got Talent, reality TV producer Mark Burnett has teamed up with popular online peer-to-peer social netorking site MySpace to create a television show that seeks out the best new political voice for the youth of America. In the show, titled Independent, contestants are challenged to tackle issues in order to display their political ideals and beliefs. The show's viewers then offer reviews and present more challenges to the contestants by either calling in to the show or through their MySpace pages.

The winner of the show will get $1 million to be put towards either their own 2008 presidential campaign bid or to give to an organization centered on issues relevant to the nation’s youth.

Burnett hopes that Independent will help “to discover in a big way what America really thinks and bring to light the issues that are closest to those who now finally have a chance to be heard."

Though not yet picked up by a network, the creators hope to begin airing the show sometime in early 2008.

Candidates Enlist Youth Muscle, not Just Support

In what has been named “Camp Obama,” Illinois Senator Barack Obama has enlisted the help of his youth base by sponsoring a group of 1,500 "campers" to help aid his 2008 presidential campaign. Open to all ages but comprised of a majority of college students, the group's goals include reaching out to “Generation Facebook” in an effort to promote political activism. Stationed in Obama’s home-state of Illinois, volunteers go through training that seeks both to educate on the policies and promises of the Senator but also teach effective ways to go about spreading these messages to potential voters in what has been called “Campaigning 101.”

Similarly, former Republican Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has developed his own system to entice young people to help the campaign raise money by offering commission on money raised for his campaign.

Candidates aren't just using young volunteers as free labor. Obama has in fact hired a youth coordinator to do young voter outreach and mobilization.

Other political hopefuls from both parties have started their own programs to appeal to those under 30. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) recently launched a program that involves both a text-messaging campaign and the hiring of her own full-time volunteer youth coordinator whose work includes bringing in support from the newly-developed Students for Hillary chapters located on college campuses across the country. Other initiatives include presidential contender John Edwards' recent cross-country college campus tour that aimed to spark campus mobilization in support of his campaign. Edwards has also hired a youth coordinator.

Student Voting Rights in Michigan

State Rep. Rebekah Warren (D-Ann Arbor) brought two bills before a Michigan State House committee in a hearing last week in an attempt to repeal Rogers's Law which requires Michigan residents to register to vote using the same address as their driver's license.

Rogers's Law has become a major impediment to student voters, because under the law, students who live at school during the school year, but list their parents' residence as their permanent address, must either change the address on their drivers' license to the place they're currently residing or vote using an absentee ballot. First-time voters (as many students are) are not allowed to vote absentee however and must vote in person in the district of their permanent address - a major inconvenience for students who don't live near where they go to school. Students who chose their school address would have to update it every time they moved around campus.

Warren's legislation would eliminate the requirement that a Michigan voter's voter registration address match their drivers' license, making it easier for college students to vote where they attend school, rather than in their hometowns.

The Contented Young? Hardly.

Michael Barone has a syndicated article in Townhall.com today that talks about young people as “The Contented Young.” He does a good job of noting the potentially significant role the youth vote can play in the next election given their size and the fact that they will be voting for a lot longer than older voters. Indeed, the sheer size of the Millennial Generation voters – 42 million citizens today and on track to be one-third of the electorate by 2015 – indicates that young voters will be a tremendous force in politics in 2008 and in future elections.

However, his argument that young people are content and that’s why they don’t vote is erroneous. First, young people ARE voting. The 2006 election was the second in a row in which the youth vote went up, increasing by two million voters over the last midterm election, a 25% increase. That came on the heels of the 2004 election, when turnout among 18-29 year olds increased by 4.3 million, or nine percentage points, over 2000 levels. The very youngest voters, 18-24, increased their turnout by 11 percentage points, nearly three times the overall electorate’s turnout increase (4 points). Young voters drove the nation’s high turnout in 2004.

Second, Barone uses Social Security as an example of young people’s “whatever” attitude and contentedness with the status quo. But Social Security is just one issue that, at the time of the debate, did indeed engage young activists. And when polled, young adults indicate that their top concerns include a number of crucial issues through which both Republicans and Democrats can reach out to this cohort, including jobs and the economy, the cost of college, Iraq, and health care.

According to a Young Voter Battleground Poll conducted by the bipartisan polling team of Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group and Celinda Lake of Lake Research Partners, a plurality of young voters (39%) cast ballots in order to support a candidate or political party with whom they agreed on the issues. Forty-three percent of those surveyed named the war in Iraq as the most important issue when deciding who to vote for in 2006, followed by health care (37%), creating jobs (36%), and college affordability (31%).

Where does this leave Republicans? Today’s young adults are leaning Democratic currently, but Republicans shouldn’t and can’t throw up their hands and walk away. (As many top Republicans have said themselves, including top strategist Karl Rove) This generation is too big to walk away from and research indicates that partisanship is formed in early adulthood and remains significantly stable throughout life. If Republicans want to win tight elections now and regain power in the future, they need to court young people.

Not only must Republicans court young voters, there is a strong constituency of Republican and Independent young adults eager for outreach from the GOP. In 2006, 38% of 18-29 year olds voted for Republican congressional candidates – given that this age group will number more than 42 million in 2008, that’s a big bloc of potential voters. Further, according to 2006 polling, young Republicans were ten percentage points more likely than young Democrats to say they were “almost certain” to vote this past election or has already voted early. They were also strongly supportive of President Bush (83% approval, compared to 38% overall) and of the Republican Party. Republicans must continue to engage and energize GOP voters under 30.

Today, young voters are of the size and increasing propensity to vote that they can make the difference in close elections; ten years from now, they will be the base for the political parties and the difference between holding power or not. Writing them off as “the contented young” and waiting for them to come around, is hardly an option for either party.

YouTube, MySpace and 11 Other Sites Off Limits to Soldiers

Effective today, the Military is banning YouTube, MySpace and other sites on all its networks and computers according to a memo by Gen. B.B. Bell, the U.S. Forces Korea commander. The policy is being implemented to protect information and reduce drag on the department's networks, according to Bell.

Unfortunately, many of the blocked sites are used by soldiers to keep up with their family and friends back home. While soldiers will be able to access the sites from their own computer, the Associated Press points out that DOD computers and networks "are the only ones available to many soldiers and sailors in Iraq and Afghanistan."

The sites covered by the ban are the video-sharing sites YouTube, Metacafe, IFilm, StupidVideos, and FileCabi, the social networking sites MySpace, BlackPlanet and Hi5, music sites Pandora, MTV, and 1.fm, and live365, and the photo-sharing site Photobucket.

Read This!

Sunday's Boston Globe had an article by Susan Milligan that talked about the potentially huge impact young people could have in the 2008 elections. You can read the article here.

It's nice to see that our message is getting out there - that young people are engaged and ready to make their voices heard.

Eroding Wages for College Graduates

With the school year coming to an end, college graduates will soon be hitting the job market. The good news is that the employment rate for young, educated workers is rising. The bad news is pay continues to decline.

The latest Snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute, illustrates how the labor market for young college grads, ages 25 to 35, is slowly improving, but remains weaker than before the last recession six years ago. “Young college graduates are still facing lower real wages than they did six years ago,” says economist Elise Gould.

After a slight rise in real hourly wages among young college graduates in 2005, their wages fell again in 2006, continuing an otherwise downward trend since 2001.




"There appear to be jobs, however, these workers seem to have little bargaining power to bid up their wages. It is possible that these workers are underemployed or there is a job quality problem, as exemplified by the low rate of employer-provided health insurance," writes Elise Gould.

Reigning in the Wild West of the Student Loan World

The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Student Loan Sunshine Act today by a vote of 414-3. The bill cracks down on relationships between lenders and colleges and sharply increases regulation of the student loan industry.

Among other things, the legislation bans all gifts from lenders to college officials, prohibits campus administrators from sitting on lender advisory boards, requires disclosure of college-lender relationships, and protects students from aggressive marketing practices. It also gives the U.S. Education Department authority to regulate certain aspects of the private loan market.

As Reuters reports:

"Investigations by Congress and New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo have accused lending institutions of providing pay and perks to college financial aid officers in return for being put on 'preferred lender' lists shown to students looking to borrow money for their education.

Allegations have also emerged of questionable stock dealings involving lenders, financial aid officers and one employee of the U.S. Department of Education, which oversees the nation's complex student financial aid system."

Connecticut Creativity

So last Wednesday I blogged about a proposed constitutional amendment being voted on in Connecticut’s General Assembly that would authorize seventeen-year-old citizens who pre-register to vote and who will turn eighteen on or before Election Day to vote in the primary for the general election.

The amendment fell 9 votes short of the three-quarters vote needed to help put it on the state-wide ballot next year. A group of young Democrats accused politicians of panicking and changing their votes to no when the bill looked like it was going to pass. (Lawmakers in Connecticut's General Assembly are able to change their votes as often as they want before they're recorded.)

Well, in a great show of creative user-generated content, Lon Seidman (former campaign manager to Congressman Joe Courtney) and the Connecticut Young Democrats put together a YouTube video berating the flip-flopping lawmakers.



And check out news coverage it got...



HT to Future Majority

Polling Young Voters

The latest Young Voter Strategies analysis of national polls finds young adults' interest in politics is high and that core national security and pocketbook issues are on their minds - but 19 months before the 2008 election, many young voters haven't decided who they're supporting for president.

Check out the analysis here.

In Case You Missed It

This past Thursday, the House of Representatives passed legislation that would extend federal hate-crime protection to include gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and disability and increase penalties against attackers. Hate crimes under current federal law apply to acts of violence against individuals on the basis of race, religion, color, or national origin.

President Bush has threatened to veto the bill. "There has been no persuasive demonstration of any need to federalize such a potentially large range of violent crime enforcement, and doing so is inconsistent with the proper allocation of criminal enforcement responsibilities between the different levels of government," the White House statement said.

Should the law be expanded? Or is it not necessary? What do you think?

Read This!

Ben Goddard has an awesome article in The Hill today about youth interest in politics being on the rise.

"Younger voters are smart, connected and have proven they can make a difference. They operate outside the political mainstream and communicate below the mass-media radar. But they are engaged and they will vote. Candidates for president ignore their potential and their communications channels at their peril," he writes.

You can read the whole article here.

Must See TV

(Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times)

The Republican presidential candidates are having their first debate tonight at 8pm EST at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. It will be moderated by Chris Matthews and will be aired on on MSNBC.

The list of expected participants includes:
Sam Brownback, a senator from Kansas
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York.
Jim Gilmore, the former governor of Virginia.
Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas
Duncan Hunter, a congressman from California
John McCain, a senator from Arizona
Ron Paul, a congressman from Texas
Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts
Tom Tancredo, a congressman from Colorado
Tommy Thompson, a former governor of Wisconsin

Adam Nagourney has a post on the Caucus (the NYT's political blog) about what to watch for during the debate.

Common Sense Connecticut

Today could be the day when Connecticut's 17 year olds become a step closer to voting in the primaries. Word on the inside is that bill is going to be run today. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's the video 411 and here's my 411:

In a show of common sense voting reform, Connecticut’s General Assembly is considering a constitutional amendment to the Connecticut Constitution which would authorize seventeen-year-old citizens who pre-register to vote and who will turn eighteen on or before Election Day to vote in the primary for the general election. “Connecticut should be among the national leaders when it comes to voting rights,” said Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz (D). “Giving 17 year-olds the right to vote will increase turnout, make political candidates more accountable, and address a shocking inequity in our laws that allows a 17 year-old to enlist in the military but not vote.” Not only would lowering the voting age to seventeen for primaries increase voter participation among young people, but it would help create life-long voters since we all know thatvoting is habitual.

Here's an article by Susan Bysiewicz, the CT Secretary of the State and James F. Spallone, a state representative for Chester, Deep River, Essex and Haddam; he is an assistant majority leader and member of the Government Administrations and Elections Committee.