Candidates want more college students, lower tuition
Six candidates for governor shared their visions for post-secondary education today during an event at Anoka Technical College.
Four DFLers and two Republicans participated in the bipartisan forum. Much of the discussion focused on issues like tuition rates, textbook costs and the availability of jobs. State Rep. Marty Seifert, R-Marshall, pledged to lower community college tuition as governor.
"When I appoint MnSCU board of trustees members, I'm going to give them the directive from the governor's office that their job is to get us out of the top ten in tuition costs for our community college students," Seifert said. "We are pricing people out of the market and the ability for them to work their way through school."
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Seifert also said he wants to make sure college graduates have jobs available. And he repeated his contention that high taxes are hurting Minnesota's business climate. Rep. Paul Thissen, DFL-Minneapolis, took issue with the claim. Thissen said Seifert and other Republicans are doing the state a disservice with their comments.
It's a great place to start of business," Thissen responded. "And these myths that Rep. Seifert and others throw around saying everybody's flocking away from Minnesota because of one single thing, is terrible for this state. And we don't need a governor who's going to continue down that path."
Former state Sen. Steve Kelley said he wants to raise taxes to solve the state budget deficit and increase education spending. Kelley said he wants all children to graduate from some post-secondary program.
"One of the biggest changes that I would make as governor is a shift from this view that higher eduction is only a private good, and therefore we can ask students to pay more and more tuition because it's good for them," Kelley said. "We have to pay attention to the fact that higher education is also a public good. That we all benefit from having more people graduate from higher education."
Sen. Mike Jungbauer, R-East Bethel, wants money to invest too. But he doesn't want to raise taxes. Jungbauer said he would prefer making a shift in tax policy.
"The way we tax today is on income, which is actually punitive, and we're taxing production," Jungbauer explained. "We need to go to a statewide sales tax, or some way to tax consumption versus production." It's much more stable and will actually generate more money."
Sen. John Marty, DFL-Roseville, said he wants to increase post-secondary participation as well as high school graduation rates.
"We are the only industrialized country in the world where the current crop of high school kids is going to have a lower graduation rate than their parents generation," Marty said. "That's not the way you build for the 21st century."
Organizers of the higher education event invited all the announced DFL and GOP candidates for governor. They said nine were expected to participate, but only six showed up. Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner said she was disappointed by the absences.
"What you're looking at up here is not even a third of the announced gubernatorial candidates from the DFL and Republican parties," Gaertner said. "Why aren't the rest of them here? Why aren't we all talking about this very critical issue?"
Here's the complete audio: