As millions of college students return to campuses this fall, they face a hard reality: Their tuitions are skyrocketing.
Struggling with a sluggish economy and staggering budget deficits, states are shifting more of the costs of higher education onto students. The cost of going to a public four-year college rose an average of ten percent this year, including eight percent in New Hampshire.
When it comes to rising tuition, we owe students more than throwing up our hands and asking them to shoulder more debt. But that's exactly what President Bush is doing. He is trying to slash funding for Pell Grants and cut back on work-study jobs. He has done nothing while AmeriCorps has cut thousands of slots.
College is the best ladder to opportunity our country has. I know it from my own life. I was the first in my family to go to college. I worked my way through North Carolina State University, and that single blessing has made all the difference for me.
Unfortunately a college education is getting harder and harder to afford. According to one study, two million young people will miss college over the next decade because they can't afford it. That is an extraordinary loss -- for those young people, for their parents who worked hard to give them a better life, and for all Americans.
To make college affordable to anyone willing to work for it, I have a plan called College for Everyone.
Here's how it works: We'll pay the first year of tuition at a public university or community college for every student who comes to college prepared to learn, takes responsibility and gets a part-time job.
That free year of college tuition will eliminate the sticker shock that scares off so many students. And it will simplify a financial aid process now so complex that getting a student loan can be tougher than getting a small business loan. Once students are in college, it is much easier for them to work with school officials to find additional sources of financial aid.
In return, students will do their part by getting a part-time job or doing some community service. They'll have to work hard in school, pass their courses and stay out of trouble. I also want to tap the patriotism of America's young people by offering four-year scholarships to future teachers who commit to working in communities where they're needed most and to students who commit to improving our homeland security in fields where we're now short on needed people.
To help pay for these measures, I will end the wasteful, excessive profits that banks earn on student loans. We spend six billion dollars subsidizing banks to lend to students. That's wrong. Instead of giving billions of dollars to banks, we ought to cut out the middleman give the money to students instead.
This administration's failure to support higher education is part of a bigger story. Our nation was founded in the belief that anyone can build a better future by working hard. But today, our leaders seem to think that if you just help the people at the top, somehow the whole country will do better.
Thanks to this administration's tax policies, middle-class families are bearing a larger share of the tax burden. Twelve million children don't have health care. Poor children are trapped in failing schools. Washington lobbyists pay for political campaigns. Our environmental policies put polluters first.
America deserves better. We deserve leaders who are committed to the values that make America great: hard work, opportunity, and great rewards for honest success. Those are the values behind my College for Everyone program, and they're the values behind my campaign. The daughters of bus drivers who work hard deserve as much respect and as much opportunity as the sons of presidents. That's the great promise of America. We need to work together to keep it.
