Barack Obama took a 15-minute conference call to speak with college journalists across the country and held a question-and-answer session on Saturday. Here are some of his answers:

Q. How do you feel about affirmative action?

“I believe, that if properly structured, then affirmative action can help increase diversity and promote opportunity. It can be abused, if structured as a rigid quota, in a way that’s not fair to students and applicants.”

Q. How will you improve the job market for those graduating from college?

“We have gone through eight years of economic mismanagement and we’re now seeing the final verdict on a failed economic policy that says you give more and more to those with the most.

What we’re going to have to do long-term is reinvigorate the fundamentals of our economy, and that means that we are making college more affordable and improving K-12 education.

Short-term, more immediately, I think that we’ve got to invest in infrastructure improvements and other stimulus, rebuilding our roads, our bridges, putting people back to work who have been laid off in the construction industries. I think it’s important for us to change our tax code by giving a tax cut to middle-class families. They will then spend that money and that will help — improve the job market.”

Q. How do you feel about Senator Kennedy’s Serve America Act?

“What we want to do is double the Peace Corps. We want to provide more opportunities to serve through Americorp, programs like Teach for America, and what I’ve done is I’ve tied it to college scholarships so that young people not only are encouraged to serve, but they’re also in a position to be able to pay for their college educations.”

Ryan Borchers contributed.