Perhaps the most important rule in any media profession is “know your audience.” This is just as true for politicians as it is for comedians or television producers.
If you’re doing a stand-up routine for 5-year-olds, chances are, you would modify your act to make it more kid-friendly.
It’s true: Gov. Nikki Haley managed to bring up her plans for colleges during her speech last night. She spoke about her plan for an “accountability-based” method of funding colleges by letting them “compete against themselves.”
While the plan to fund schools based on a standardized achievement rubric is reminiscent of Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, at least she was talking about substance. She gave students in the audience information about something that would affect them personally, should she be re-elected.
That plan, however, was the only time Haley’s vision for colleges in the next four years were directly mentioned in the entire proceedings.
(And because her answer was prompted by a student’s question, there was a chance that the topic of college funding might have not come up at all.)
College students are self-interested, and they have every right to be. With rising tuition costs, predatory student loans and an unsteady economy, students want to know what voting for Haley would mean for them while they are still in school.
She focused her remarks on K-12 and the current state of the job market, both of which have the potential to influence higher education later on. However, these are indirect factors affecting college students rather than ones that will concern them in the next four years.
Aside from that plan, Haley didn’t really have much else to say in terms of issues affecting students right now.
And if “know your audience” has any validity whatsoever, that might have been a sizable mistake.