Higher education is threatening to become an issue in the next United States presidential election. Democrat Bill Clinton hopes this tactic will mark him out from his Republican opponent.

Mr Clinton is making clear that he views higher education as a defining issue, a subject on which he is prepared to make a stand against the Republican-led Congress. Last week, for example, he promised tacitly to veto legislation that would end the interest subsidy on student loans while borrowers are still in college.

Speaking to college administrators at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education in San Francisco, he said of the new Republican leadership: "Their proposals will cut investments in our future and increase the costs of student loans to our neediest students to fund tax cuts for the wealthy.

"To all of this I say no. I will fight these proposals every step of the way and I want you to join me in fighting them too."

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

As president, Mr Clinton has yet to use his power of veto. When Democrats controlled Congress he had no need of it.

But since the Republican landslide last November he has made clear explicitly that he will veto Republican plans to rewrite his crime Bill to remove the commitment to put 100,000 new policemen on the streets.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

The fact that he is prepared to fight on higher education issues too shows that he thinks they are political winners. Aid for education is popular with the moderate and liberal wings of the Democratic Party, according to White House aides, as well as with independent middle-class voters on whom they expect the 1996 election to hinge.

All of which makes education a promising battleground, the Clinton aides think, as the president tries to answer Republican arguments that the federal government does a lousy job of most things it undertakes and should be radically pruned.

In defiant tone last week, Mr Clinton also made clear he would not compromise with the new Republican majority on such ideas as eliminating the Department of Education, or trimming his reforms to the student loan programme.

Although the president is sympathetic to scaling back government in some areas, he argued that increased spending was needed to ensure prosperity in an economy based on technology and information.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Killing the Department of Education, he said, "would be like undercutting the Department of Defense during the Cold War".

Mr Clinton was most passionate when talking about his Student Loan Reform Act, signed into law two years ago. This enables students to borrow directly from the government bypassing middlemen. It was introduced as a pilot scheme and applies to only a small minority of loans.

But Republicans are calling the reform unwieldy and expensive, and want to limit it so that it applies to no more than 40 per cent of all student loans.

The Democrats think they are on to a winner here. They argue that the direct loan programme saves the government money, while only bankers benefit from the traditional method of issuing loans.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

The American Council on Education, the umbrella group for higher education, has endorsed Mr Clinton's proposed "Middle Class Bill of Rights" which would give people tax deductions for college tuition.

It resolved to support Mr Clinton after he had pledged to fight the Republican proposal to end the interest subsidy on loans while students are still in college.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ