 "Photo: Mark Mulligan")
The current state of higher education finance is denying the American dream to the college-aged generation, U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., told between 150 and 200 University students Tuesday.
Feingold was in Austin to raise money for Democratic congressional candidate John Courage's campaign. The "listening session" held in the Quadrangle Room at the Texas Union was sponsored by the University Democrats. Issues discussed by Feingold and Courage in the town hall style meeting included higher education cost, immigration law and same-sex marriage.
Feingold said the current higher education situation is a "slide" whereby the federal government passes the cost of higher education onto the states who then pass it down on to individuals and families.
"This is an outrage to your generation," Feingold said.
In 2003, the Texas Legislature voted to return the power to regulate tuition to state colleges and universities. A House bill which would have reinstituted tuition caps was introduced in mid-2005 but failed to pass the Senate later that year. Courage said that the "sliding" effect Feingold mentioned was the reason for tuition deregulation in Texas, but that the results were disastrous.
"Deregulation was just the removal of rules without considering why the rules were there in the first place," Courage said.
Feingold said a higher education degree is now equivalent to what a high school degree was 30 years ago. He said two possible plans to alleviate tuition costs for students include controlling interest rates for education loans and working with private corporations to help carry the cost. He said that a college education was increasingly important to a decent quality of living.
"Can't get along without it," Feingold said.
The two also addressed a variety of other issues, including the current debate over immigration. Feingold said that the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, which would allow illegal immigrants to become citizens, is a good starting point for reform. He said the bill does an excellent job of allowing immigrants to gain opportunities by only imposing a small fee for entering the country illegally but providing acceptance through a guest-worker program that would eventually lead to a green card and possibly full citizenship.
"These immigrants are a wonderful and critical part of our country," Feingold said.
Courage said that the issue of same-sex marriage was an issue about human rights. He said same-sex partners who can not marry are currently denied rights that are given to heterosexual partners. He said that the current laws regarding same-sex marriages constitute unequal treatment under constitutional law.
"These issues are like what we fought for in the '60s with the Civil Rights Movement," Courage said.
Feingold said that he and U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., are possibilities for the 2008 presidential nominations and joked that he told McCain while in Iraq that should the two senators run against each other, the senator from Arizona "would even win in Wisconsin."
"You'll certainly see me in 2008, but I don't know what I'll be doing," Feingold said.
A lone protester walked the hallway handing out flyers that read "Sen. Russ Feingold is wrong on the issues." He would not comment.
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