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Statement on the President’s America’s College Promise Proposal

January 21, 2015
Editorial

College Affordability

I commend the President's America's College Promise proposal. The idea of waiving the first two years of community college tuition for some students will be a godsend for many hard working families who are having trouble making ends met in today's economy. As the first person in my family to go to college and someone who is still paying off tens of thousands of student loan debt I know firsthand how difficult it is to afford a college education.

In 2008 economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz wrote the book "The Race Between Education and Technology" which explores the important relationship between the economy and education. The book details how in the early 20th century the United States was able to create one the most successful economies in the world by investing in education. Those lessons have somehow been lost in recent times. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt has become the largest form of consumer debt, other than mortgages. The financial load on America's students has more than tripled from $363 billion to $1.2 trillion in less than 10 years.

Those daunting costs are forcing many aspiring students to shelve their dreams of higher education. This is an unacceptable sacrifice that many of our youth are being forced to make, but the President's America's College Promise will offer them an alternative to that dim prospect. The precariously high levels of student debt in our country threaten to destabilize our recovering economy, and could topple us into a default crisis similar to what we saw in 2008 when the housing market collapsed and cast us into an economic abyss.

Expanding access to affordable higher education will make our economy more resilient against such shocks, and most importantly bolster our workforce's competitiveness against other nations who are outpacing our educational performance. It is vital that we help more Americans to better themselves as they contribute to this country's long-standing excellence. Our nation's youth deserve to chance to be outstanding and the best road to achieve that is a stellar education.

Issues:Education and Student Loans