Former House speaker Newt Gingrich opposes everything President Obama has done with the economy.

Ron Paul, US Congressman, believes in the traditional concept of marriage between a man and a woman.

Repealing the health care reform bill campaigned by Obama is what former governor of Massachusetts Mitt Romney has planned if elected in November.

The former Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum prides himself on being the son of a legal immigrant and has voted in favor of building additional fences along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out undocumented immigrants.

Going into Wednesday’s CNN Arizona republican presidential debate, these are the issues the candidates are firm on, but their stances on higher education are lacking enthusiasm.

Do they have plans to lower tuition cost? Creating more scholarship opportunities? Dropping the interest rate for student loans?

These questions are important to college students and aren’t being answered.

To say that Santorum has a hard time relating to college students would be an understatement. In New Hampshire a crowd of mostly college-aged students booed him off stage after comparing gay marriage to polygamy.

In January, the GOP presidential hopeful accused Obama of “elitist snobbery” for wanting all U.S. children to receive a college education.

“It’s no wonder President Obama wants every kid to go to college,” Santorum said at a rally in Florida on January 26. “The indoctrination that occurs in American universities is one of the keys to the Left holding and maintaining power.”

He also encouraged people not to give their money to universities that spread left-wing beliefs.

It is well known that college is not for everyone. This country needs firefighters, police officers, mechanics and electricians, which are all occupations that do not require a college degree. But to call Obama a snob for encouraging young people to attend college? The ultimate purpose of higher education is to build a stronger economy.

Instead of fixing the problem with high tuition, Gingrich simply suggested students should work and graduate with no debt.

Sadly, Gingrich, it isn’t that easy.

The Washington Post reported in a recent speech Gingrich said that college students are “coddled” with “luxury dorms and lavish extras, such as lobster nights in their dining halls.”

I am not sure what dorm rooms Gingrich has seen, but I can guarantee the MSU dorms are far from luxurious.

Where are lobster nights in our dining halls?

“Students take fewer classes per semester. They take more years to get through. Why? Because they have free money,” Gingrich said in a speech to local Republicans in Florida, according to the Washington Post. “I would tell students: ‘get through as quick as you can. Borrow as little as you can. Have a part-time job.’ But that’s very different from the culture that has grown up in the last 20 years.”

Gingrich should’ve thought twice before criticizing today’s students about their spending habits. Since these remarks have been made, numerous news outlets have resurfaced a 1995 Vanity Fair interview with Gingrich where he recalled asking his parents for financial help during his college years.

“I do not want to work. I want all my time for my studies,” Gingrich’s mother recalled his son saying in the Vanity Fair interview. Hypocrite, much?

All you need to know about Gov. Romney is that he believes in for-profit colleges. He said they “will bring innovation and healthy competition to higher education.”

According to a poll on USA Today, 92 percent of college students who attend for-profit college take out student loans, while only 27 percent of students at public college take out loans.

Then there is Congressman Ron Paul. Sure he can seem radical at times and he really has no chance of winning the Republican nomination, let alone defeat Obama. With all that said, Paul is the best republican presidential contender when it comes to higher education.

If elected, Paul would kill federal student loans, calling it a failed program that has put students $1 trillion in debt.

“I want to help our students, but I believe we will assist them the most by eventually transitioning student aid away from the inefficient and ineffective federal government and back to local governments and private market-based solutions — which simply work better,” Paul wrote in an op-ed in USA Today.

It seems the Republican candidates need to get their priorities in order. Once they do that they should probably come up with some plausible solutions to the problems they need to address first, instead of arguing like children about who should marry whom.