Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
August 24, 2013
Weekly Address
The White House
August 24, 2013
Hi, everybody. Over the past month, I’ve been visiting towns across America, talking about what our country needs to do to secure a better bargain for the middle class.
This week, I met with high school and college students in New York
and Pennsylvania to discuss the surest path to the middle class – some
form of higher education.
But at a moment when a higher education has never been more
important, it’s also never been more expensive. That’s why, over the
past four years, we’ve helped make college more affordable for millions
of students and families with grants and loans that go farther from
before.
But students and families and taxpayers cannot just keep subsidizing
college costs that keep going up and up. Not when the average student
now graduates more than $26,000 in debt.
We cannot price the middle class out of a college education. That’s
why I proposed major new reforms to make college more affordable and
make it easier for folks to pay for their education.
First, we’re going to start rating colleges based on opportunity –
are they helping students from all kinds of backgrounds succeed, and on
outcomes – their value to students and parents. In time, we’ll use
those ratings to make sure that the colleges that keep their tuition
down are the ones that will see their taxpayer funding go up.
Second, we’re going to jumpstant competition between colleges over
innovations that help more students graduate in less time, at less cost,
while maintaining quality. A number of schools are already testing new
approaches, like putting more courses online or basing course credit on
competence, not just hours spent in the classroom.
And third, we’re going to help more students responsibly manage their
debt, by making more of them eligible for a loan repayment program
called Pay-As-You-Earn, which caps your loan payments at 10 percent of
what you make. And we’ll reach out directly to students to make sure
they know that this program exists.
These reforms won’t be popular with everybody. But the path we’re on now is unsustainable for our students and our economy.
Higher education shouldn’t be a luxury, or a roll of the dice; it’s
an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to
afford.
Thanks, and have a great weekend.
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