A couple of weeks ago, as part of my series of stories on the economic stress of college debt, I wonder if readers knew about the college loan status of our elected leaders. This weekend, I poked around on the internet and found one blogger who has written a little bit about Barack and Michelle Obama's college loans. But while I didn't find any real information on John or Cindy McCain's college situations (including the college arrangements of their children), I did find a number of strange and disconcerting items about McCain's college affordability proposals (and lack thereof).

Links to the earlier parts of my series are at the end of today's note.

Howie in Seattle has written about the Obamas and their college debt, and I'll let you click through and read his short text for yourself. What I was pleased to note was that both of the Obamas have talked about their debt publicly, which at least means they're familiar with the challenge of paying down college loans.

But when I looked for any references to the McCain's college experiences, here's what I found.

First, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported on April 15 -- no irony intended, surely -- that in the McCain campaign's economic plan, he urges "officials at the U.S. Department of Education to work with governors to 'make sure that each state’s guarantee agency has the means and manpower to meet its obligation as a lender of last resort for student loans'.” In simple language, he wants states to help guarantee that students can borrow more money to go to college.

In his remarks on the release of the economic plan, McCain reportedly said,

"in the years ahead, these young Americans will be needed to sustain America’s primacy in the global marketplace. And they should not be denied an education because the recklessness of others has made credit too hard to obtain.”

The Education Department and Congress already have been acting to try to put in place safeguards in case the credit crisis does end up making it difficult for some students to take out loans. In an interview with The Chronicle on Friday, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings — who met with loan-industry officials last week — said the Bush administration remains focused on preparing “lender of last resort” procedures in the event that too many private lenders stop offering federally guaranteed student loans.

Plainly put, McCain's solution to the college debt problem in America is to make sure that students can borrow more money. Nowhere in the plan is there a commitment to increase funding for Pell Grants, to guarantee minimal interest rates for student loans, or to expand debt-forgiveness for graduates who go into public service work of any sort. The only solution he offers is to push students to borrow more money.

Who is advising him to adopt this plan?

In May, the Chronicle answered that question, and it looks like McCain is relying on people who may not be a college student's (or college parent's) best friend, to say the least.

Among them is Eugene W. Hickok Jr., who joined George W. Bush’s administration as under secretary of education in 2001 and became the Education Department’s deputy secretary in 2003. In his previous position as Pennsylvania’s secretary of education, Mr. Hickok called for a major overhaul of teacher training and pushed that state’s legislature to create a grant program to reward institutions that graduated at least 40 percent of their in-state students within four years. Although most of his subsequent work at the U.S. Department of Education focused on elementary and secondary education, he remained a staunch advocate of holding colleges accountable for graduating their students in a timely manner.
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Also listed among Mr. McCain’s education advisers is William D. Hansen, an advocate of substantial changes in federal financial-aid policy, who served the current president as deputy secretary of education from 2001 until 2003. Before coming to the department, Mr. Hansen was executive director of the Education Finance Council, which lobbies on behalf of nonprofit lenders in the guaranteed-loan program. In his department post, he angered advocates of direct lending—who raised questions about his ties to the student-loan industry—by considering selling the government’s direct-student-loan assets to lenders such as Sallie Mae or Citibank.

After resigning from the Education Department, Mr. Hansen joined Chartwell Education Group, a consulting firm. In a presentation delivered at a 2006 American Enterprise Institute conference, he recommended that the federal government auction its direct-student-loan portfolio to the private sector, privatize the Perkins Loan program, and encourage charitable organizations to guarantee educational loans for students from low- and middle-income families so they would be eligible for lower interest rates. He also called for a repeal of all personal income-tax deductions and credits for higher-education costs, saying that the resulting savings should be redirected to Pell Grants.

So his top two advisors are both men who came from the Bush adminstration -- the same administration whose policies have led to the crisis we're in now, and which has flat-funded Pell grants for the past four years -- whose primary recommendations involve eliminating student loan guarantees altogether and privatizing the few precious aid programs that are still left standing.

If there's one lesson to be learned from the Bush administration's predisposition for privatization -- the "security" and "reconstruction" of Iraq comes to mind -- is that privatization costs more, delivers less and leaves those who are supposed to deliver services completely unaccountable to American voters.

But that apparently reflects the very philosophy put forward by the McCain campaign, according to the Chronicle's finding:

Another person listed as a McCain education adviser, Williamson M. Evers, is serving as the Education Department’s assistant secretary for planning, evaluation, and policy development while on leave from his position as a research fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace and a member of the Institution’s Koret Task Force on K–12 Education. An education adviser to George W. Bush in the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, Mr. Evers is listed by the Hoover Institution as specializing in research on education policy, ­especially as it pertains to curriculum, teaching, testing, accountability, and school finance from kindergarten through high school. From July to December 2003, he served in Iraq as senior adviser for education to Administrator L. Paul Bremer of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Also on the list is F. Philip Handy, a Florida businessman who played a key role in the reorganization of that state’s education system eight years ago. He led the panel established by state lawmakers in 2000 to come up with a new governance structure for education in the state, and then went on to become chairman of the new governing body that resulted, an appointed “superboard” overseeing every sector of public education from preschool through college. That governance overhaul met resistance from many educators who saw it as giving too much power to the governor and Legislature, and the state board’s powers over public universities were subsequently eroded as the result of the passage of a 2002 ballot measure amending Florida’s constitution to establish a Board of Governors for the public university system.

The Associated Press last month quoted Mr. McCain as saying he also has been turning to Jeb Bush, brother of the current president and a former governor of Florida, for education advice.

The list published by the Fordham Institute also includes Virginia Walden Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice; Lisa Graham Keegan, a former state superintendent of education in Arizona; Townsend McNitt, deputy chief of state for the U.S. Education Department; Frank Riggs, a former member of Congress who is president of the Charter Schools Development Corporation; Hannah Skandera, a former state undersecretary of education in California; and Jane M. Swift, who served as acting governor of Massachusetts from 2001 to 2003.

At best, I see no one in the list who advocates for increased aid to students and their parents, to ensure that more high school graduates have more access to college, and that fewer college graduates are burdened with insurmountable college loan debt.

At worst, I see a who's who of Bush administration retreads -- and Jeb Bush himself -- who have contributed to the crisis that now exists.

Why is John McCain seeking the advice of people who have demonstrated either a lack of concern for parents of college students, or a blatant desire to continue milking the middle class of any remaining liquid assets?

And why is there no more to the McCain platform on higher education than this? The Chronicle seems to have discovered the answer to that question, too. In an item published July 25, titled "Want to Know McCain's Higher-Education Agenda? You'll Just Have to Stay Tuned," it discovered that McCain doesn't have a plan to help college students and their parents.

Sen. John McCain’s chief education adviser, Lisa Graham Keegan, found herself in a tough spot Thursday when asked by the moderator of a New America Foundation forum to lay out the Republican presidential nominee’s agenda for higher education. “I can’t do that because the Senator hasn’t done that yet,” Ms. Keegan said. “I apologize for the timing.”

“I am going to let him do that when he wants to,” Ms. Keegan said, “and simply say that he has been a long-term supporter and enthusiast about the idea that we have to connect kids in high schools immediately into their postsecondary experience, whatever that’s going to be.”
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Senator McCain has touched on higher education in his economic plan, which calls on the Education Department to take steps to ensure students continue to have access to loans for college. And his team of education advisers includes enough advocates of major change in higher education to suggest that he eventually will offer proposals that generate headlines.

There's video of that New America Foundation event at YouTube. It's long but you can hear McCain's senior education advisor herself explaining that he doesn't have a plan yet. And it's now fewer than 100 days before the November election.

Finally, I appreciate TexMex for covering this item in the Daily Texan. It sounds like Bush's education secretary isn't content with the damage she and her boss have done to public education through No Child Left Behind, or to college students' access to college by flat-funding Pell grants for years. This article suggests that she still sees opportunity to do more damage before the Bush team leaves office.

The U.S. Department of Education is awaiting approval to conduct a national survey of students who are currently receiving Pell Grants. The request has sparked 11 national higher education associations to voice concern over the way the survey has been conducted, which could affect how major universities deal with credit transfer.
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The education department requested an emergency survey last week to ask Pell Grant recipients about the challenges they face when transferring credits from one institution to another. Pell Grants are federal funds given to college students who need to most help. The education department has said it is concerned with wasting taxpayer resources, which it says occurs every time a Pell Grant recipient is forced to repeat coursework when transferring schools.
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The department requested permission to conduct the survey the day after its request. The department is required to receive permission from the Office of Management and Budget when it wants to use taxpayer money to survey college students. The main criticism came because the department did not want to wait for public comment before spending approximately $375,000 to do the survey.

Jennifer Poulakidas, a vice president at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges, which is one of the 11 associations that spoke out against the department, said she did not see the need for an emergency survey. "Our concern, shared with many others in the higher education community, is that there doesn't seem to be any rationale behind the survey," Poulakidas said.

Does anyone else find these articles -- and the policies, objectives and tactics described in them -- disconcerting?