Nathan Deal will run for reelection as governor of Georgia on Nov. 1. He is a conservative Republican and was a member of Congress for 17 years before being elected governor in 2011. His opponent, Democrat Jason Carter, is a state senator and the grandson of President Jimmy Carter.
Governor Deal talked to District about the main issues for students in this next election, as well as their employment situation after graduation.
Q: What are the major issues for our generation that students at SCAD should be focusing on for this next election?
A: We believe that jobs are the end product of education. We’ve gone through a revitalization in our education in the higher levels of our technical schools and our colleges and universities and we’ve asked them to look at the degrees they’re offering and then look at the placement rates of the people who are getting those degrees. There’s some shifting going on so that we graduate young people who will be able to get a job and not have to go home and live in their mother’s basement.
Q: It has been said that, by the year 2020, 60 percent of jobs in Georgia will require a college degree, while only 40 percent actually have one. What is your take on that, and how would you plan on addressing that issue?
A: The first thing that is very important to us is to keep the HOPE scholarship solvent. …We’ve kept the scholarship a merit-based scholarship and that helps keep the best and brightest student in our state. The other thing we’ve done to increase graduates is a program called “Go Back, Get Ahead.” And this is where the institutions of higher learning are going through their records and finding people who enrolled in their institutions but never got a degree and encouraging them to come back.
Another thing that we have done is we were awarded a grant as one of only a few states in the country, called Complete College America. And ours is Complete College Georgia. And that is asking technical schools and colleges and universities to do everything possible to make sure that people not only enroll in their institutions, but they also get a degree at the tail end of it.
Q: A lot has also been said about the unemployment rate in Georgia, and SCAD students are very concerned about actually getting a job upon graduation. What is your take on that and what do you plan on doing about it?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has a very odd way of coming up with numbers. The month of August — in which they base their upping of our unemployment rate — was actually the second highest since 2007 in terms of total jobs creations. That’s almost 25,000 new jobs. The unemployment applications dropped by 27 percent. So the jobs went up and the unemployment applications went down and yet they say our unemployment rate went up. Then again, if you believe their statistics on that one, then I suppose you ought to take their number on the number of new jobs that Georgia has created since I became governor. They say its 500,000+ new jobs. We are fortunate in this state; our work force has continued to grow and our population has grown. We were the tenth largest population state when I became governor four years ago. We’re now the eighth largest population state. … People don’t come to your state unless there are job opportunities available.
Our state revenue increased almost 5.2 percent this past fiscal year … that’s an indication that people are having jobs, that they’re paying taxes up into the state level as well as in the federal level, so I think the future of Georgia looks exceedingly bright.
Q: Your opponent has said that voter registration, particularly among the young and minorities, is going to be key in this election. What is your take on that?
A: I think it’s important for anybody who is eligible to vote to be sure that they do so. That’s one of our great freedoms in this country, to be able to have our own personal opinion about the way our government is being run. I would agree with you that it is important not only that people register but also vote. I encourage everybody to do that and we are looking forward to a great turnout.
