In his State of the Union speech last Tuesday, President Obama spent a great deal of time discussing education in America. Recognizing the importance of an affordable higher education, Obama highlighted his administration’s goal of reducing college costs in order to make college more accessible.

Anyone who doubts the need for such changes surely has not dealt with college financial aid recently. It is a widely accepted fact that a college education is necessary for higher earnings; in an age in which employability is determined by education, students from every walk of life must be able to access higher education. Unfortunately, the costs of tuition at the nation’s colleges and universities has increased four times faster than the rate of inflation, pricing out many middle- and lower-class families. As a result, student loan debt now outpaces credit card debt, leaving young adults to face years of indentured servitude in order to pay off their education debts.

College costs and rising student loan debt have become a rallying point in the Occupy movements, something that the Obama administration is very aware of. Many believe that this newfound attention to college costs is simply a political move to bring young voters back into the Obama fold. But regardless of Obama’s possible motivations, his proposals have great merit and ought to be seriously considered by legislators from both sides of the aisle.

Obama has fleshed out his proposals in recent days, offering ideas such as:

• Typing federal aid to college affordability rewarding schools which lower tuition prices, restrain tuition growth, graduate low-income students, and provide assistance in finding employment after graduation.
• Increasing the amount of federal Perkins Loans (loans for low-income students) from $1 billion to $8 billion. The administration points out that this increase would not add to the budget because these are interest bearing loans which will be repaid over time.
• Creating a $1 billion program similar to the existing Race to the Top program. To win money, states would have to maintain funding levels for higher education and align entry and exit standards among K-12 schools and higher education institutions to help students graduate on time.
• Creating a $55 million program for colleges. To win money, colleges would need to improve value and efficiency through measures such as redesigning courses to take advantage of new technology, early college preparation to reduce the need for remedial coursework, or offering credit based on competency rather than the number of hours spent in the classroom.
• Requiring colleges to provide information to help families make the right college decisions. Required information would include information to make it easier for families to compare different financial aid packages and information about post-graduate earning and employment potential.
• Keeping the Stafford loan interest rates at the current 3.4% to make the loans more affordable in the future.
• Doubling the number of federal work-study jobs.

Thus far, his proposals have received mixed reviews. The higher education community deplores these measures, arguing that forcing colleges to cut costs would force them to cut corners thereby lowering the quality of higher education. There are several problems with this argument, though, primarily with the idea that recent tuition hikes have been connected to education quality. Tuition increases have outpaced inflation four to one; these increases have not brought a higher quality of education and have instead been signs of growing inefficiency on many college campuses. The idea that colleges cannot cut their exorbitant tuition rates without also cutting vital education services is laughable. For proof, look at Vanderbilt University: Vanderbilt hiked tuition by 4.3% the same year that its chancellor was paid nearly $2 million. That $2 million salary could have paid the full tuition for 43 students.

Legislators across the aisle have also denigrated the plan. “The president is saying that people can’t afford to go to college anymore, and that just simply is not true,” said Representative Virginia Foxx, the North Carolina Republican who is chairwoman of the House Higher Education subcommittee. “Tuition is too high at most schools, but it isn’t the job of the federal government to punish those schools. It’s very arbitrary, and the president sounds like a dictator.” Representative Foxx is clearly unaware of the plight of the average family; it is most assuredly true that the average middle-class family cannot afford current tuition rates at the vast majority of colleges and universities. Moreover, her assertion that the federal government has no role in helping to control higher education costs is also incorrect; so long as the bulk of financial aid comes from federal sources, the federal government should most certainly have a role in determining how that money is spent.

Colleges and universities cannot continue to pay their administrators six- and seven-figure salaries, spend millions on athletic programs, spend millions on marketing to lure student to apply, and engage in other highly inefficient practices at the expense of students and tax payers. President Obama is right to take a stand on the rising costs of higher education, and we hope that the men and women of Congress will work to help the struggling families who make up their constituencies