Obama puts higher education on notice in annual speech

President Barack Obama called higher education an economic imperative and outlined adjustments he said would make education more accessible in his annual State of the Union Address to Congress on Tuesday.

In the speech that was widely seen as the unofficial kickoff to the president’s reelection campaign, Obama called the cost of college a “daunting challenge.”

To lessen that financial blow, Obama urged Congress to extend the nation’s tuition tax credit by July. The president said extending the cut would prevent interest rates on student loans from doubling as Americans now hold more student loan debt than credit card debt.

Further, the president called for the number of work-study opportunities for students to double in the next five years – a way, he said, for students to earn their way through school.

Obama had the strongest words when he said it’s not enough for the government to increase student aid, but rather said states and universities hold some of the responsibility for increasing costs.

“We can’t just keep subsidizing skyrocketing tuition; we’ll run out of money,” he said.

The president called on states to make higher education more of a priority in their budgets and said colleges and universities can take steps to keep costs down.

“Let me put colleges and universities on notice,” he said. “If you can’t stop tuition from going up, the funding you get from taxpayers will go down.”

Outlining some of the possible adjustments, Obama said he’d spoken with university presidents who have redesigned courses and embraced technology so that students can finish their education faster.

“The point is, it’s possible,” he said.

The president also addressed high school students – calling for states to require all students to stay in school until graduation or until the age of 18 in a move Obama said won’t let students walk away from education.

In addressing the growing needs of science and technology industry, Obama spoke of the importance of partnerships between business and education in order to train workers. As part of that initiative, the president called on Congress to give community colleges more resources so that they can become a type of community career center.

Using that idea, Obama pledged to retrain two million workers nationally to fill science and technology centered jobs.

The president also called for citizenship opportunity for students studying in the United States after either being brought here as children or coming later in life for education.

“Let’s at least agree to stop expelling responsible young people who want to staff our labs, start new businesses, and defend this country,” he said.

Obama said Congress should ignore election-year politics and create a comprehensive plan for non-citizen students to earn citizenship in order to keep their skills in this country.

Jordan J. Frasier is a Fall 2011 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent. You can learn more about him here.

This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.