By Alec Downing | Contributor
Perhaps the editors of The Echo left a glaring omission in last week's edition because there was so much work put into the front page (an article which I appreciated thoroughly, as a curious student that did not, but should have, attended the UPR student meeting). I completely understand that no article is perfect by any means, and that editing mistakes can and will happen; we're human after all. What I would like to do is set the record straight.
What I'm referring to is the fact that in last week's "Candidate Consideration" article, which aimed to show "presidential candidate's views on higher education," the author listed many points for all of the presidential candidates . . . except for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who got one seven-word bullet point: "Promised to cut the Department of Education." I don't think The Echo is attempting to shut out the views of one candidate in favor of others (although I do find it odd that Ohio Governor John Kasich (R-OH), who is polling anywhere from 7-12 percent, half of what Ted Cruz is polling at, was given five bullet points). I just want Cruz's views to be accurately represented, which cannot be done with one derogatory-sounding phrase.
Yes, Cruz does want to cut the Department of Education. This is not because he hates students or because he wants grants to be taken away. Cruz is for giving this power back to the states, so that the federal government cannot impose "one size fits all" regulations on students in differing demographics, such as those in Idaho and New York City. There should be a different approach to what is taught and how it is taught in different parts of the country, and, in his opinion, the Department of Education is restricting this.
Like Donald Trump was quoted as saying in the article, Cruz also wants to cut fraud and wasteful spending. They also both agree that Common Core standards are "very bad." In a 2015 speech, Cruz went so far as to say, "We should get the federal government out of the business of curriculum. Common Core is being used by the federal government as a mechanism to force a uniform curriculum, to put federal bureaucrats in charge of what is taught to our kids."
Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark Supreme Court case, but Cruz does not think it has been properly applied. Many federal lawmakers have opposed programs that provide money for low-income children to attend high-achieving private schools. Cruz favors letting families choose their preferred schools, even if they are outside their defined districts.
Cruz's last education position is one that should be near to us: student loan debt. He and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced bipartisan legislation to "allow borrowers to refinance their student loans," citing the fact that "the Federal Government is scheduled to make more than $50 billion in profit on the loans it makes this year. We should see higher education as an investment, not as a revenue opportunity. Those students are our future, not a profit center. We ought to set repayments based on what is in students' and graduates' best interests (emphasis mine)."
Unlike other candidates who would rather the government just eat its losses, Cruz and Warren made an appeal to making college loans more like other loans: able to be refinanced as the free market dictates.
I'm not going to ask you to vote for Ted Cruz. I'm not going to ask you to agree with Ted Cruz. I'm not even going to ask you to like Ted Cruz. What I will ask, though, is that The Echo give one of the GOP frontrunners the privilege of printing his stance on the issue, not a seven-word clause.
