By James El-Mallakh–

Debt and rising tuition costs for students are not issues that are at the forefront of the governor’s race, voting for which is Nov. 8. The lack of attention that the candidates give to issues confronting university students may be the reason that students are offering a lukewarm response to the election. With tuition to state schools going up in Kentucky and internationally, there is a good chance that these concerns will have to be addressed if politicians want to appeal to college students.

Charis Burke, a freshman economics major, said “Jobs in America these days, they’re more and more dependent on education and if [politicians] are not even focusing on the fact that secondary education is very expensive and preventing a lot of people from doing that,” saying, “they’re not even focusing on that, I think it’s going to harm us in the long run.” Burke also added that if politicians were to focus more on resolving the tuition problem, then she would pay more attention to them.

Laura Kennedy, a sophomore anthropology/ biology major, agrees that political leaders need to address this growing concern, “[students] are a huge voting force…and I think a lot of times we’re not necessarily people they reach out to, at all. If they started saying ‘hey, we know you’re in debt and we would like to talk to you about that’, even just expressing interest about dialogue would be fantastic, it would be a step.”

Dewey Clayton, Professor of political science, said one way the University of Louisville can get students more involved in the voting process is to, “invite them to campus and discuss their ideas individually as well as possibly coming and engaging in some sort of open debate, which often is one way to get students involved with the issues.

“If one of the reasons students aren’t very involved in the voting process is because they think it is unimportant, Clayton emphasizes, despite those feelings, it is important. “Often times students will think ‘well those don’t really involve me, I don’t know who the candidates are and I don’t really care’ but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Now’s also the time for you all to start thinking about politics and what it means to elect one candidate verses another.”

Higher education costs have been discussed by the candidates of the gubernatorial election. Steve Beshear and Gatewood Galbraith both discuss higher education costs on their websites, and it is discussed among all three candidates during a debate on KET. The full debate can be found on C-SPAN’s website.

According to projectonstudentdebt.org, students graduating today are leaving school with a national average of $25,250 in debt and are entering a market with fewer job opportunities. The problem has even prompted president Obama to pass executive resolutions that would help students alleviate their debt problems. But regardless of how much the issue of debt and tuition is talked about today, it is certain to become one of the biggest issues facing candidates across the country in the near future.

As Laura Kennedy puts it, “It’s getting pretty ridiculous as evident right now with all the occupy movements, most people I know will be at least $17,000 – $20,000 in debt by the time they get out of college. We are the future voters of America, and I feel like, in general, we’re very disenfranchised from politics and the government.”

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