IRVING, TEXAS — Hillary Rodham Clinton and Jeb Bush, potential foes in the 2016 presidential contest, said Monday that higher education has the power to transform lives and be a force for democracy around the globe.
Clinton and Bush spoke separately at the Globalization of Higher Education conference but chatted briefly offstage. The event, co-organized by Bush, offered a bipartisan twist for the nation’s two dominant political families, both of whom could return to the presidential campaign trail next year.
Onstage in solo performances, each focused on education policy and the need to make higher education affordable and accessible across the globe.
“When people around the world have access to this kind of American model of education, it illustrates … that we believe in spreading opportunity to more people, in more places, so that they, too, have the chance to live up to their own God-given potential,” Clinton, a former first lady and secretary of state, said at the Dallas event.
Bush, former governor of Florida, spoke at the start of the conference. “Higher education in America has a growing affordability problem, while billions in the developing world struggle with accessibility. Exporting U.S. post-secondary education and global consumers at scale can help really resolve both issues simultaneously,” Bush said.
