Gov. candidate Pence releases education platform

In her husband’s latest campaign advertisement, Karen Pence delivers to voters a message from the classroom.
 
“Mike will be an education governor,” she says in the commercial. “I should know. I’ve been educating him for years.”
 
Rep. Mike Pence, R-6th District, released his seventh television advertisement less than a week after unveiling a detailed higher education policy proposal.  

These steps include using grants to reward college students for on-time and early graduation and increasing state funding to programs like dual-credit courses and accelerated degree programs.

According to a policy outline released by the campaign, Pence’s six policy steps aim to “Improve academic success through policies that increase the rate of on-time college completion and decrease the cost of obtaining a degree from Indiana’s public colleges and universities.”

One of the proposed policy steps would require students “to make meaningful progress along degree completion milestones to receive continued financial
aid funding.”

If implemented, that step in particular would signal a move away from the current financial aid structure, which allows students eight semesters of support and requires only a minimum grade-point average.

“We believe part of the current state dollars should be committed to students that make the progress necessary to stay on a four-year degree path and given to those students as a bonus when they complete college early or on time,” said Christy Denault, communications director for Mike Pence for Indiana.
 
Public grant funding concerns are valid but need to be hammered out more fully than Pence’s current proposals, said Don Hossler, a faculty member in the IU School of Education and former IU-Bloomington vice chancellor for enrollment services.
The biggest concern would be the potential impact of his policies on students, Hossler said.

Hossler said Pence’s proposal might not allow for students who change majors for a valid reason. Consider a student who came to IU to study business but isn’t admitted to the Kelley School of Business and is forced to find a new path, Hossler said.

Others, Hossler pointed out, might be excellent students who simply change their minds.

“It’s actually not as easy as I think his policy suggests to quickly ascertain which students are on a path to a degree and which ones are sort of just meandering around a curriculum,” Hossler said.
 
The proposal also provides rewards for universities that increase on-time degree completion and aims to make taking required courses easier for students.

“Degree completion in four years requires the shared commitment of both the student and the public university,” Denault said.
 
Hossler said rewarding universities based on graduation rates might disadvantage
smaller institutions.

Requiring universities to catalog information such as the number of times a student switches majors would require a non-trivial amount of work in information management, Hossler said.

So far, Pence’s opponent for governor, Democrat John Gregg, has not released any higher education policy proposals, but his Communications Director Daniel Altman said their camp will outline plans more fully as the campaign continues. Altman was quick to point to Pence’s voting record in Washington D.C., which Altman said included voting against Pell Grants.
 
“Pence’s 12-year record in Congress shows that he has voted time and time again against Indiana students,” Altman said in a press release.