No college student left behind

Last Friday morning, President Barack Obama arrived at the University of Michigan campus to unveil his new college affordability plan. Three thousand students welcomed him that morning. They thronged campus grounds, waited anxiously, anticipated a message that would offer a glimmer of hope for the future of their education.

At a time when student loan debts surpass credit card debt and the average college student graduates $24,000 in debt, a viable college affordability plan is more than necessary. But Obama’s speech was hardly revolutionary.

For the most part, his promise to improve the U.S. economy and lower tuition costs seemed to translate into a grandiose plan to win the student vote. Consider the portion of his speech where Obama said, “Let me put colleges and universities on notice: If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down. Higher education can’t be a luxury; it is an economic imperative.”

As expected, many students received these words with optimistic cheers. Sophomore Lulete Mola, a political science major at the University of Minnesota, was among those students. “Anyone could have come up with this proposal — it’s simple,” she said. “But sometimes it’s the simplicity that we overlook. And while I agree that Obama is trying to win student vote, he’s also young enough to remember his college tuition and his student debt.”

Yet some students, myself included, remain skeptical.

For example, Obama said that if public education institutions can keep tuition costs low, his administration will, in exchange, increase aid to $10 billion a year. Public education institutions that fall short of this obligation will be penalized.

This message evokes a previous education proposal under George W. Bush’s administration: the unpopular No Child Left Behind Act, which required students to pass state-administered assessment tests if their schools are to receive federal funding. This act failed its mission miserably; the result was a crippled education system that left half the U.S. public schools facing budget cuts for failing to meet federal standards. In Minneapolis alone, one-third of Latino, African-American and Native American students didn’t graduate from high school under the NCLB Act, according to the Star Tribune. Instilled in Obama’s proposal is a similar penalty system where pressure is on colleges to regulate tuition costs. Student grants, loans and work-study programs will shrink in universities whose tuition costs continue to rise.

Just because it replicates the model for the previous NCLB Act, is Obama’s college affordability proposal doomed to fail? Perhaps not; linking increased federal aid to a university’s efforts to minimize tuition can encourage universities to cut back on unnecessary spending.

Obama succeeded in calling out universities on their excessive spending. But why aren’t states also being held responsible? When trimming state budget, lawmakers often target higher education. Last year, Minnesota state universities and colleges faced a 10 percent cut in state aid. Other states like Arizona and Washington decreased college funding by as much as 24 percent. Demanding that states prioritize higher education in their budget plans has never been more necessary.

Many will interpret Obama’s speech as a meager attempt to regain student support — this is especially true with Election Day drawing so near. Nonetheless, his proposal is a first draft to the ongoing struggle to make college affordable, and both colleges and states should work to find a long term solution.