16th District Candidates on Making College Affordable
By: Rachel Havey
Updated: October 25, 2012
WMBD 31 News is your local election headquarters. Leading up to Election Day, we're finding out where local candidates stand on the issues. In the 16th District Congressional Race, Incumbent Republican Adam Kinzinger is being challenged by Democrat Wanda Rohl. Tonight we're asking the candidates about education. What needs to be done to make college affordable for all students?
Rohl:
"I have friends who went and got a business major making $100,000 a year and I became a social worker. Our education cost the same, our earning potential is very different. So I like the idea of paying a little bit less, in return payments for my student loans. Because right now, I'm strangled with $30,000 worth of student loan debt. It's a huge part of my income. So we have to look at the cost of education. Is the education system working with industries so that we have trained people coming out with actual real world skills."
Kinzinger:
"I've always supported support for PELL grants and student loans, student aid, and students. In fact I voted to keep the interest rate low at a time when there's a bad economic recovery. In fact there's no economic recovery at all. And ultimately here's what you fix. We get ourselves in a situation where we're creating jobs. And it's like when I graduated from college in 2000 I had more job opportunities than I knew what to do with. The graduates today don't have that. So if you take
a kid and say now you're gonna have job opportunities when you graduate, it makes the investment in college that much more feasible."
Rohl:
"I have friends who went and got a business major making $100,000 a year and I became a social worker. Our education cost the same, our earning potential is very different. So I like the idea of paying a little bit less, in return payments for my student loans. Because right now, I'm strangled with $30,000 worth of student loan debt. It's a huge part of my income. So we have to look at the cost of education. Is the education system working with industries so that we have trained people coming out with actual real world skills."
Kinzinger:
"I've always supported support for PELL grants and student loans, student aid, and students. In fact I voted to keep the interest rate low at a time when there's a bad economic recovery. In fact there's no economic recovery at all. And ultimately here's what you fix. We get ourselves in a situation where we're creating jobs. And it's like when I graduated from college in 2000 I had more job opportunities than I knew what to do with. The graduates today don't have that. So if you take
a kid and say now you're gonna have job opportunities when you graduate, it makes the investment in college that much more feasible."
