Skip to footer

Obama calls for college affordability before Rutgers address

The President, who is scheduled to give Rutgers' commencement address today, sat down for an interview with the college newspaper first to call for more affordable college costs.

|
Carolyn Kaster/AP
President Obama waved to the crowd on Sunday morning as he boarded Marine One to travel to Rutgers.
  • By Josh Lederman Associated Press

President Barack Obama will urge this year's graduates at Rutgers University to pursue positive change in the world despite a cascade of challenges from student loan debt to overseas turmoil.

Obama's visit to the New Jersey campus on Sunday falls on the 250th anniversary of Rutgers, a public university that the White House has praised as a "remarkable institution of higher learning." University leaders have been lobbying the president for years to deliver what will be the school's first commencement speech by a sitting president.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Obama's speech at High Point Solutions Stadium in Piscataway would focus on how the Class of 2016 can navigate the rapidly changing planet.

"These students are as well-prepared as any students have ever been to confront those challenges and use this changing environment to create a better world," Earnest said. "That's what makes the president so fundamentally optimistic about the future of our country, and that optimism is manifested quite well in this year's graduating class at Rutgers."

In an unusual move, the president granted a pre-commencement interview to the Daily Targum, the college newspaper, after the editor-in-chief put Obama on the spot by requesting it on live television during a recent White House visit.

Quizzed about student loans and college affordability, Obama stressed that the modern economy will require highly educated workers, but he added that his ability to restructure financial aid was limited barring new laws from Congress.

"The basic principle that we should be working towards is that everyone needs more than just a secondary school education, whether it's a two-year or four-year degree," Obama said. "And that it's got to be affordable. We can't have situations where young people are loaded up with $50,000, $75,000 or $100,000 worth of debt coming out of school."

Sunday's address is the second of three commencement speeches that Obama will deliver during his final graduation season as president. Earlier in May, Obama told graduates at historically black Howard University that the country is "a better place today" than when he graduated from Columbia University more than 30 years ago. The president will also speak on June 2 at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who ran unsuccessfully for president before endorsing Donald Trump, won't be attending the Rutgers speech. The Republican will be visiting nearby Princeton University to watch his son Andrew play Yale in the Ivy League baseball championship.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Obama calls for college affordability before Rutgers address
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2016/0515/Obama-calls-for-college-affordability-before-Rutgers-address
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe