Student debt is crushing the lives of millions of Americans. How does it happen that we can get a home mortgage or purchase a car with interest rates half of that being paid for student loans? We must make higher education affordable for all. We must substantially lower interest rates on student loans. This must be a national priority.
Education should be a right, not a privilege. We need a revolution in the way that the United States funds higher education.
Hillary Clinton and I have worked together on a higher education proposal which will guarantee free tuition in public colleges and universities for every family in this country making $125,000 a year or less. We're going to fight for paid family and medical leave. Those are the issues that the American people want to hear discussed, and I'm going to go around the country discussing them and making sure that Hillary Clinton is elected president.
Every person in this country who has the desire and ability should be able to get all the education they need regardless of the income of their family. This is not a radical idea. In Germany, Scandinavia and many other countries, higher education is either free or very inexpensive. We must do the same.
One of the issues I'm really happy about is that recently, Secretary Clinton and I worked out an agreement on higher education, making public colleges and universities tuition free for every family in America earning less than 125,000 bucks. Didn't go as far as I wanted. But that's 83 percent of the population in this country.
How can the United States be competitive globally if higher education is unaffordable? Germany, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Scotland and Sweden have no tuition for college. Other countries have low tuition. We need the best educated workforce in the world. Instead of spending endless amounts on the military, we need to invest in our young people.
We are moving in exactly the wrong direction in higher education. Forty years ago, tuition in some of the great American public universities and colleges was virtually free. Today, the cost is unaffordable for many working class families. Higher education must be a right for all - not just wealthy families.
We must fundamentally restructure our student loan program. It makes no sense that students and their parents are forced to pay interest rates for higher education loans that are much higher than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages.
We need the best educated workforce in the world. Hundreds of thousands of bright, young, qualified people who want to go to college or get a higher education are unable to do so, not because they lack the ability but because they lack the money.
Fifty years ago, great schools like the University of California and the City University of New York - as well as many state colleges - were tuition free. Today college is unaffordable for many working class families. For the sake of our economy and millions of Americans, we must make higher education more affordable.
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