President Obama told David Letterman Tuesday night that guaranteeing student debt is the key to uniting America.
“We’ve got some obligations to each other, and there’s nothing wrong with giving each other a helping hand so that, that single Mom’s kid even after all the work she’s still can afford to go to college,” Obama said. “There needs to be some help on a student loan, so they can end up curing the next disease or making sure they are starting the next Google.
“If you want to be president and if you want to bring people together, I think that’s the attitude that you’ve gotta have.”
While at the same time the President failed to address his solution to rising tuition and fees that are fueling increasing levels of student loan debt.
Tuition increased by 15 percent during Obama’s first two years in office.
Research by American Enterprise Institute scholar Andrew G. Biggs found that tuition inflation has consistently exceeded the rate of inflation despite the billions the federal government has spent on student loans.
College Board data shows that tuition at public institutions increased by 5.6 percent between 2001 and 2011, and by 2.6 percent at private institutions during the same period.
And although Obama has doubled federal spending on Pell Grants since 2010, he has not increased the maximum award from the current $5,500.
That scarcely makes a dent at the University of Chicago where tuition hit $55,416 last year or New York University where tuition hit $56,787.
Tuition at Harvard Law cost $12,307 for a year while Obama attended the school in 1989; however, the President would have been stuck with $49,950 for one year of tuition were he to have attended the same school for the 2012-13 school year.
Yet Obama mocks Mitt Romney for telling students to attend cheaper schools.
Simply increasing student loan awards without reducing tuition treats the symptoms without addressing the problem – problems made worse in the face of a 12.7 percent youth unemployment rate and weak post-collegiate job opportunities.
About John Rossomando
Neither candidate is doing anything to address tuition inflation. If the republican’s were smart, they would reaffirm that the “invisible hand” can work for the masses, by arguing for the return of bankruptcy protections…a necessary element of any free market system, and one that would absolutely and quickly lead to more rational pricing (and reduced government spending) via sensible lending limits.
If they don’t its because they have been corrupted by the predatory lending industry. Shame on them. Idiots.