Soaring tuition costs at colleges and universities has many people concerned about where the future of higher education is headed. With many University students from the University of Syracuse in the community there has been an interest in this community in a proposed plan by President Obama to cut rising tuition costs. Byron Tau has reported in Politico "Barack Obama offers plan to curb rising tuition costs."
On Friday President Obama announced a plan that would pressure colleges and universities to cut down soaring tuition costs by making federal aid contingent on a schools’ affordability and value to students. Obama has said “Higher education is not a luxury. It’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford. It’s not just enough to increase student aid and you can imagine why. We can’t just keep on subsidizing skyrocketing tuition.”
Obama says that the United States needs an economy in which every American should have access to a "world-class higher education.” This all appears to be part of Obama’s election-year pitch to middle-class voters, who are worried about health care, job security, tuition bills and the housing market in an unstable economy. This higher education initiative by Obama is specifically aimed towards young people who aggressively backed Obama in 2008 over his GOP rival.
Under this proposal by Obama the formula used to disburse federal grant and work-study dollars would be changed to consider affordability, low costs and value. The president's idea is to reduce the crushing amount of debt students have to take on to finish their education while stopping the upward spiral of higher education tuition costs. The Obama administration says it also wants to increase educational opportunities for low-income students and families.
Obama has commented to students “I just want all of you to understand, your president and your first lady were in your shoes not that long ago. We didn’t come from wealthy families. The only reason we were able to achieve what we were able to achieve is because we got a great education. We could not have done that unless we lived in a country that made a commitment to opening up opportunity.”
Meanwhile Republican National Committee spokesperson Kirsten Kukowski has said in a statement “While focusing on student loans and college affordability is important for our country, the problem is we’ve heard this all before from President Obama. As with so many other important issues, President Obama is really good at making promises and is really bad at following through on them.” As the nation moves towards the November presidential election it's up to the students and their families to now determine whether or not they feel Obama is sincere about his education goals and whether or not he can materialize his promises.
