President Barack Obama is expected to introduce a plan to create a rating system for colleges linked to financial aid in an effort to reduce the staggering costs of a higher education in a speech at the University of Buffalo on Thursday, according to the New York Times.
President Obama would like to have the system in place as early before the 2015 school year. The ratings will be based on a variety of factors including graduation rates, tuition, the amount of debt carried by graduates and the earning power of graduates. In order to have the ratings tied in to federal financial aid the program would need to be given Congressional approval, according to the New York Times.
"All the things we're measuring are important for students choosing a college," a senior administration official told the New York Times. "It's important to us that colleges offer good value for their tuition dollars, and that higher education offer families a degree of security so students aren't left with debt they can't pay back."
The plan is part of a summer-long push by the Obama administration to focus on the middle-class; earlier this month President Obama discussed a new economic plan built around a strong middle-class with growth coming from the middle out. With the price of a college education skyrocketing in the last twenty years the president feels that action needs to be taken, according to the Associated Press.
"Just tinkering around the edges won't be enough," President Obama wrote in an email to supporters. "We've got to shake up the current system."
Tuition has risen at public universities by 75 percent over the last ten years while private colleges have raised tuition by 25 percent. During the same time period the average median income for families has actually fallen. In a job market that increasingly requires a college education for anything above minimum wage jobs the cost of an education has risen to a point where most students graduate with an amount of debt they may never be able to pay back. The total of student debt in the country has reached $1.2 trillion, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
The idea behind the system will be that if a student is attending a highly rated college they will have access to more favorable loan rates and better grants in order to convince colleges to cut costs and allow students to graduate without a financial weight around their neck. Some are skeptical that such a plan could garner the support in Congress to go into effect, according to the Christian Science Monitor.
"Part of the reason the federal government hasn't been able to do anything is less a technical issue than a political one," Amy Latinen, deputy director for higher education at the New America Foundation, told the Christian Science Monitor. "The federal government can do a lot. Obama on-his-own can't do much."
