hen it comes to higher education, George W. Bush is thinking big. Very big.
Consider the pledge - stunning for a Republican who advocates limited government - that he delivered last month in Hampton, N.H.: ''College is every parent's dream for their children,'' the GOP presidential nominee said, ''and we should make this opportunity available to all students.''
We should? All students?
Americans, including many in the Republican Party, have long debated whether all high school seniors should go on to college. Or whether, in a meritocracy, taxpayers should subsidize big public universities for students who didn't shine in high school. Or whether parents should go into debt for freshmen who might lack the maturity to know when to stop partying and start studying.
For his part, the Texas governor wants to give all poor students a boost, regardless of their academic ability. He would increase the need-based Pell Grant to $5,100 for freshmen, up from $3,300.
What does Al Gore say? While the Democratic nominee backs upticks in Pell Grants (although not on the scale Bush has proposed), he is reserving his rhetorical muscle for the Clinton administration's favored policy to help college students: tax credits for tuition.
Which renders the 2000 political calculus for students and their parents thusly: The Republican is embracing a $5 billion new federal subsidy for the poor, and the Democrat is touting tax cuts, primarily for the middle class.
''It's like a Brecht play - no one's playing their assigned parts,'' said Terry Hartle, vice president for government and public affairs at the American Council on Education. ''The Republicans want to help the lower income, and the Democrats want tax relief to help middle- and upper-income families.''
Why have the rivals seemingly traded places on easing the college tuition burden, an issue that scores highly in the polls? And whose plan would work better?
This much is certain: The candidates foresee a squeaker on Election Day and want to make inroads with swing voters and each other's core constituencies. Pell Grants are a very popular brand name with low-income and minority families who tend to vote Democratic, but who may be open to Bush's appeals. Vice President Gore's tax-relief proposal - which would provide up to $2,800 a year for tuition - is especially geared to benefit the middle class, where Bush's stronghold lies.
Bush would spend an additional $1 billion on $1,000 scholarships for Pell recipients who pass advanced placement science and math exams, as a reward for aiming high. Taken together, the Republican plan would shower more money on Pell Grants than on most other education commitments he has made this year.
Enlarging the Pell Grant program is a good issue for Bush: It appeals to so-called ''compassionate conservatives'' by helping the poor, and it also has luster for the school-choice wing, since the Pell, in some respects, is higher education's version of vouchers.
But the Pell plan has some drawbacks. If, under a President Bush, recipients of larger grants dropped out of college at steady rates, the beefed-up program could easily be tarred as a waste of money.
A better reward might be a bigger Pell Grant for college juniors and seniors, instead of just freshmen, since the upperclassmen would have an academic track record and could probably use the same relief from debt or part-time jobs.
Morton Owen Schapiro, a student-aid analyst who recently became president of Williams College, said a larger Pell program would help ''the people who are most in peril.''
According to Schapiro's research, only 44 percent of poor students go to college, compared with 86 percent of the affluent. And it isn't that richer children are smarter: Among students with top test scores, 19 out of 20 who are wealthy go to college, compared with 3 out of 4 from low-income families.
Just the attention Bush is paying to financial aid is impressive, if surprising. Last year, New York state spent almost 10 times as much on student aid as did Texas ($634 million and $67 million), and only recently did the governor approve a broad-based aid program for Texas college students.
Texas ranks 45th nationally in the percentage of 19-year-olds attending a US college, according to a study by financial-aid expert Tom Mortenson. For low-income students, the state is 46th.
''Since Bush has been in power in Texas, he hasn't done anything for higher education opportunity,'' Mortenson said.
Yet Mortenson, a champion of Pell Grants, has cottoned to the Bush proposals in spite of his own traditional Democratic sympathies. ''For whatever Mr. Gore has invested in trying to understand K-to-12 education, he hasn't even cracked a book on higher education,'' Mortenson said.
Gore's silence on Pell Grants is interesting, given its resonance with his political base. Mortenson argues it is because Gore is a Southerner, from a region where politicians tend to favor merit scholarships over need-based aid like Pell Grants. Bush's proposed $1,000 Pell scholarships in math and science reflect that same spirit, he said.
More likely, however, is that Gore and his advisers think swing voters will see a greater personal payoff from tuition tax relief than from Pell Grants
Tax credits for tuition and fees are now worth up to $1,500, which Gore would expand to a maximum of $2,800. A Clinton plan to do just that is now stalled in Congress.
Accepting the nomination last month in Los Angeles, Gore framed his tuition tax plan as a a modern-day GI Bill, which transformed both American colleges and the economy by helping about 8 million veterans enroll after World War II.
''I will fight for a targeted, affordable tax cut to help working families save and pay for college,'' Gore said.
In reality, though, the middle class and the wealthy are the winners so far under the Clinton-Gore strategy. They make up roughly half of the 5 million Americans who claimed the tax credits in 1999; only one-third had incomes under $30,000. And the average dollar amount claimed was about $945 for wage-earners between $50,000 and $75,000, compared with $670 for those between $20,000 and $30,000. In other words, lower income people generally benefited less.
While Gore's tax plan would do little for the poor - some of whom don't owe enough in taxes to even claim the credit - his strategy does tap the pulse of the college world's ''silent majority'': families that are neither rich nor poor, who qualify for loans but not outright grants, and therefore have to shoulder debt to cover tuition, housing, and other fees.
''We also have to give middle-class families help in paying for college,'' Gore said during his convention speech.
In reality, of course, promises made on the campaign trail often hit the skids once they reach Congress.
''Whether it's a Pell expansion or a tax credit for tuition,'' Schapiro noted, ''by the time it goes through committee, you find all sorts of people who might be helped or not helped that might surprise you.''
