Life
Obama to focus on rising tuition costs
U.S. President Barack Obama. PHOTO/File
President Barack Obama will announce a plan to shift some federal dollars away from colleges and universities that don’t control tuition costs and new competitions in higher education to encourage efficiency as part of an effort to contain soaring college costs.
Obama will spell out his plans Friday at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The speech will cap a three-day post-State of the Union trip by the president to promote different components of his economic agenda in politically important states.
On Tuesday night during his State of the Union address, Obama put colleges and universities on notice to control tuition costs or face losing federal dollars. That’s had the higher education community nervous that he could set a new precedent in the federal government’s role in controlling the rising costs of college.
Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, said Friday that schools should get federal dollars based in part on their performance.
“Historically, we’ve funded universities whether or not they’ve done a good job of graduating people, whether or not they’ve done a good job of keeping down tuition,” Duncan said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
The money Obama is targeting is what’s known as “campus based” aid given to colleges to distribute in areas such as Perkins loans or in work study programs. Of the US$142 billion in federal grants and loans distributed in the last school year, about US$3 billion went to these programs. His plan calls for increasing that type of aid to US$10 billion annually.
He wants to create a “Race to the Top” competition in higher education similar to the one his administration used on K-12 to encourage states to better use higher education dollars in exchange for US$1 billion in prize dollars. A second competition called “First in the World” would encourage innovation to boost productivity on campuses.
“We have to educate our way to a better economy,” Duncan told MSNBC.
