(MONEY Magazine) – Education is, as most Americans will readily admit, one of the big issues of the '90s. And now the twin questions of how to improve our troubled public schools and make top-quality higher education affordable to more Americans have become topics of discussion in the race for the White House. Of the four major contenders, Democrat Bill Clinton has offered the most comprehensive proposals and Republican Pat Buchanan the least. Buchanan's education position paper is a mere six sentences. ''He hasn't said a lot about higher education,'' concedes a Buchanan spokesman. In general, the Democrats favor major fixes, particularly to reform how public education is financed. Remedying the public schools is the thorniest item on the education agenda. All of the candidates except Buchanan favor national competency exams for grade school and high school students. And all but Democrat Jerry Brown support merit-pay bonuses for top classroom teachers. Explains a Brown spokesman: ''You can't buy a good teacher.'' Democrat Clinton argues for programs that would allow students to choose which local public school to attend. He also favors almost doubling the current 5.5% (or $13 billion) federal contribution to public school budgets. For his part, Brown has called for abolishing today's $393 billion school-financing system that primarily relies on property taxes. Instead, he'd depend on his proposed 13% flat federal income tax to pay for most local education costs. Both G.O.P. candidates favor experimenting with so-called tuition vouchers that would make federal money available to parents who want to enroll their children in private schools. To many voters, making college more affordable is every bit as vital as fixing the public schools. Under Clinton's college aid plan, the federal government would lend tuition money to any student who wants it -- rather than merely to those who can prove financial need (for more on the current student loan program, see page 164). A borrower could even wipe out the debt by working for two or three years as, say, a teacher, police officer or child- care worker. President Bush, who favors making student loan interest tax deductible and recently proposed raising the top annual Pell Grant for low- and middle-income students from $2,400 to $3,700, strongly opposes linking student loans to particular jobs. Brown has little faith in the present federal student aid system, which he calls a big farce. The Californian would phase out federally guaranteed student loans and replace them with outright U.S. grants, but only for students with financial need.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: NO CREDIT CAPTION: Where the candidates stand on education