Mike Huckabee’s Education Platform

January 9, 2008

Mike Huckabee’s Education Platform

In my continuing efforts to inform you about all the candidates’ education positions, I bring you Mike Huckabee, courtesy of Inside Higher Ed.com.

Read the excerpt below, or click on the link above to read the whole article:

On Mike Huckabee’s campaign Web site, there’s nary a mention of his plans for higher education should he be elected president of the United States. The former governor of Arkansas has weathered some debate skirmishes over his support for keeping the children of illegal immigrants eligible for in-state tuition and merit scholarships as long as they graduated from high school there. Beyond that dispute — and his raised hand when a moderator asked which Republican candidates didn’t believe in evolution — scrutiny of Huckabee’s education record has remained mainly on his K-12 initiatives.

When former colleagues and education officials in Arkansas talk about Huckabee, though, they remember a governor who cared deeply about higher education and who pushed for more research and better facilities, supported job training initiatives and emphasized the necessity of high-tech investment for sustained economic growth.

Huckabee’s accomplishments during two and a half terms leading a state with an overwhelmingly Democratic legislature have often placed him at odds with his Republican opponents in the presidential debates, especially when he has been forced to defend increases in spending that sometimes benefited Arkansas’ public colleges and universities. Not all of his plans were successful, however, and he didn’t always initiate the higher education reforms that were. Even when he disagreed with the Arkansas General Assembly, he tended to support increasing public funds for higher education — although it’s not clear whether that was out of pragmatic necessity or genuine conviction.

Now the former governor, fresh from a win in Iowa’s Republican causes last week, is pursuing his primary campaign with the help of intense support from voters increasingly drawn to his unifying, casual style, an economic populism and religion-infused socially conservative views — despite entrenched opposition within the party establishment. His rise, some political analysts have observed, mirrors in more ways than one the trajectory of another “education governor” from Hope, Ark., who was catapaulted to the presidency: Bill Clinton.

One thing officials who worked with Huckabee agree on is his passion for education. In 2005, the University of Arkansas awarded the governor an honorary doctorate of laws, citing his dedication to education policy. A magna cum laude graduate of Ouachita Baptist University, in Arkadelphia — completing his degree in two and a half years — and later studying (but not earning a degree) at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Tex., Huckabee went on as governor to chair the Education Commission of the States from 2004 to 2006, working with officials from across the country to study trends and recommend policy.

Read the remainder of the article here.

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