Friday, January 02, 2004

Candidate Review - Higher Education - Representative Dick Gephardt

Once again I face the problem that the most accesible words on the the Dick Gephardt Website are those of the campaign staffer who runs the website. So we present the Dick Gephards program for higher education and Teacher Corps from thew view point of one of his staffers.

"That is why, as president, Dick Gephardt will increase the accessibility and affordability of college for all Americans. As a first step, he will work to protect affirmative action programs that ensure access to higher education for well-qualified, but disadvantaged students. President Gephardt will also expand federal grant and loan programs to keep up with the rising costs of college tuition, increasing the eligibility for financial aid among middle-class families and making the first $10,000 of higher education costs tax-deductible."

and

"As we value our military by investing in the training of its soldiers through invaluable programs such as the ROTC, so must we value our teachers by investing in a similar effort to train and prepare them for the classroom.

A Gephardt Administration will launch a Teacher Corps, with the goal of recruiting two and a half million new teachers by the end of the decade. Much like the ROTC, participants in the Teachers Corps will receive scholarship assistance in return for their commitment to teach for five years and to be held to high standards of performance.


Obviously the Teacher Corp idea has implications on elementary education as well, but it is presented here for its impact on those who want to go to college on the Government Dime.

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