Pence Talks Education At Town Hall Meeting

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence says the state could make college more affordable by incentivizing student loans based on a student’s performance. 

The governor held a town hall meeting at Grant County’s Indiana Wesleyan University, Wednesday.

It’s not surprising that while on a college campus, Gov. Pence was asked about college affordability.  He says he wants to take the state’s focus on on-time completion of degrees and tie it in with student loans and financing.

“I mean, right now, our student loans are not really tied to achieving anything and I think there’s ways that we could, you could, in effect, structure it so that it creates an expectation for on-time completion or better,” Pence said.

He didn’t give specifics on how the state would achieve this, saying only that his administration is looking into different ways.  Indiana’s goal by the year 2025 is to have 60 percent of Hoosiers attain a college degree or workforce credential.

Pence says another way of keeping higher education costs low is to identify those people who might be better served by career and technical programs rather than a four-year program – which has been a major push of Pence’s administration.

“Let’s make sure the people that go to college, that that actually is the future that they want to choose right now," Pence said. "So, part of the way we reduce the burden of student debt going forward is we help our young people discover their pathways sooner.”

Pence took a lot of questions about education.  He was praised for eliminating Common Core standards in the state and defended his choice to not apply for federal pre-kindergarten program dollars.  Pence said the General Assembly’s next session in 2015 needs to be about education, as well as about drafting a balanced budget.

And, no town hall meeting would be complete without a Hoosier asking if Pence will run for president in 2016.  As usual, Pence did not directly answer the question, but says he knows he’s mentioned on lots of possible presidential candidate lists.

“What I can tell you is that my focus is Indiana," Pence said. "And I honestly believe that a lot of the times that I’m mentioned on those lists is more a statement about the progress the people of Indiana have made than it is about me.”