I thought I understood how the loans were gonna work when I started, and
it's talking about the interest that's accruing every day.
Right. So, that's a little scary to look at.
At the same time that college has become more important, it's become so
much more expensive and complicated than it used to be.
Yeah. And, it, it, it is just not possible for
the parents to be able to finance you know, a,
a bunch of kids all at the same time.
And, and that's where, society's just gotta make an investment.
I have the honor and the pleasure of introducing, President Barack Obama.
Hello Atlanta.
The reason I want to come here today is because I believe that higher education,
as you believe is one of the best investments that anybody can make in their
future.
We're trying to make sure that across the board, more and
more young people can afford to go to college, and
then afterwards, aren't so burdened with debt that you can't do anything else.
We're, we're gonna try something new.
It doesn't involve new spending or bureaucracy.
It's just a simple organizing principle, that I want all of us to sign on to.
A declaration of values.
What I'm calling a Student Aid Bills of Right, a Student Aid Bill of Rights.
And it says, every student deserve access to a quality affordable education.
Every student should be able to access the resources to pay for college.
Every borrower has the right to an affordable repayment plan.
Every borrower, has the right to quality customer service, reliable information,
and fair treatment even if they struggle to repay their loans.
It's a simple set of principles, that if everybody signed onto,
it can focus our attention into one simple basic idea, which is, make sure
that when you're doing the right thing that you're society has got your back.
Thank you, everybody.
God bless you.
Thank you.
Hello, everybody.
Hi.
You got your crew here.
We do, we do.
We have our great students right here.
How are you?
Gabriel.
Gabriel? Nice to see you man.
Good to see you.
Hi how are you.
Hi I'm Meyers.
Good to see you.
Hey how you doing?
What's your name?
Antoine.
Good to see you Antoine.
Good to see you too.
Alright.
Hi I'm Laura.
Hey Laura. Good to see you.
So how's it goin everybody?
It's goin all right.
So, today, I've, I have been focused on college affordability,
which is I assume is on everybody's minds.
Yeah Yeah
Didn't you just
pay off your loans in 2004.
Yes.
2000, basically the year I was elected to Senate.
The year before I became a US Senator,
was when we when we finished paying off all of our loans.
Combined, Michelle and mine bill was higher than our mortgage.
And, right now student debt, is actually higher than credit card debt.
Over 40 million people currently with student debt.
Yeah. So this is a,
a massive generational challenge.
Yeah There are all kinds of
things that we can do.
But it's gonna require cooperation between the states, who have to put more money
into it, the federal government, who have to think about how we can
lower the debt burden and make sure it's managed better the student.
And the parents who are gonna have to be, get, be better consumers and so
a lot of what we're trying to do is like, know before you owe.
And figure out how to, you know, for example graduate on time.
One of the things students think about is, oh, I'll take five years,
I'll take fewer credits.
Not thinking about the fact that, if you're not out in four years, you know,
each, each semester that you're taking, you know,
that's just more debt so that's important.
And then, working with the schools to partner with community colleges, and
even partner with high schools,
because you guys have already taken some college courses, right?
Yes. Yes, sir.
I read a little bit about your, each of your backgrounds.
Give me a a sense of sort of how you think about affording college, maybe we'll start
with the folks who are already in school now and how you're thinking about debt.
Did you feel like, you had enough information.
Cuz I, I know from Michelle and
my perspective, we didn't have a lot of guidance going in.
We had to kinda make it up as we went along.
How have things gone for you guys generally?
We were talking, Laura and I, about, about this earlier.
Yeah, so when I was in high school, I'm from Sarasota, Florida.
And there really wasn't much guidance as far as how to prepare for
college besides, you know, take AP classes.
Right That kind of thing.
Right.
So, my senior year, I pretty much got like a game plan down.
Yeah. I applied for
about 50 scholarships my senior year, and I wrote about 70 essays.
Yeah, it was pretty crazy.
Yeah, it is. It was like,
it was hard to keep up good grades while doing that.
I can only imagine, yeah.
Yeah and.
How did that turn out?
It actually turned out really well for me.
But my little brother is currently going through the same thing that I went through
as a senior.
He's really struggling.
So, it probably won't be the same for him.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that was pretty enterprising of you to,
to have that ability to go out there and find it on your own.
So I would say my situation is very similar to yours, as unfortunately,
I have a few scholarships pay my way through school right now, so.
That's great So
yeah That's why you got a smile
on your face Yeah
That's outstanding.
I just wanna see like, I guess me personally wanna see that,
that opportunity like, I guess.
Available for everybody Right.
Available for everybody So how about, how about for you?
I'm from Georgia, so I had the opportunity,
if I stayed in state, to receive the Zell Miller Hope scholarships.
Exactly.
That's for high school students who keep a certain grade point average and
it's financed by the Georgia lottery, right?
Yes.
Yeah. So,
my first year in college I had a combination of student loans and
the Zell Miller scholarship.
My parents have been also taking out private loans from 401K to help pay for
my school so I'm gonna have some debt to pay off afterwards, for sure.
Are there other issues that you think would have helped you or
that surprised you when you were going through this whole process?
I thought I understood how the loans were gonna work when I started, and
they said, you won't have to start paying off your loans until after school.
Mm-hm And
I get email quarterly that update me on what my loan status is,
and it's talking about the interest that's accruing every day.
Right. So, it's a little scary to look at, too.
Yeah. Yeah.
Now, Michelle'd spoken to your school, right?
Yes. Was she well behaved?
She, she didn't cause a ruckus?
No.
Okay, I wanna make sure.
And then part of her message was encouraging folks to know how to
apply to schools, have a, have a,
a broader range of schools that they were looking at, knowing what's possible.
So you guys are just going, about to go through this process.
How, how, how are you thinking about it?
And so, honestly, like, I've always been that top student, so academics is easy.
And I have a Presidential scholarship, but with the cost of living, room and
board, tuition, and extra fees it's still,
it's almost no putting a dent in the financial piece of what I need.
And so, it's almost like scholarships don't matter.
And also, Antoine you were talking about, you know, you got a great scholarship.
Yeah, yeah. So I have, I'm an oldest of six children.
Mm-hm. I have younger siblings like directly
behind me, one year, two year and they plan on attending college as me, as well.
And I, fortunately I have a scholarship and I, I will be attending college.
But the question is, like, how would they able to attend?
Right. Back to back in a two year span?
Right. You know, for
families like yours where you've got a bunch of kids and,
you know, mom who's working, maybe dad's not in the home.
You know, that's how it was for me, I had my grandparents who were helping.
It, it is just not possible for the parents to be able to finance you know,
a bunch of kids all at the same time.
And, and that's where society's just got make an investment.
At the same time that college has become more important, it's become so
much more expensive and complicated than it used to be.
Yeah. And for most people your parent's age.
Mm-hm.
You know, the cost particularly of an in-state school was pretty modest.
You might have a little bit of debt but by the time you came out,
it was the kind of debt that you could pay off in a year, maybe two years.
And that shifted.
Two things happened.
One was that state legislatures,
significantly cut back on their support for state universities and colleges.
So all of these things have changed that make it more challenging for all of you.
And that's part of why what we've done, is, first of all,
cut out the banks from the student loan program.
So that the money is going directly to students.
That left more money for to For Pell Grants and, and things like that.
Now what we're doing is we're spending a lot of time working with colleges to have
figure out how you keep costs down.
And how do you make sure students coming in know what they're going owe?
Because one of the big problems is that university will recruit.
And say don't worry.
Mm-hm.
Yeah.
You'll be fine.
You don't hear anything about it.
But you don't know what, and then in your excerpt interview, as you're about to
leave, somebody in the financial aid office says, oh, by the way-.
Here's your bill.
Interest has been accruing, here's how much debt you got,
here's what your monthly payment looks like.
Right.
And it's challenging.
One of the things that I proposed this year was, making community colleges free.
For a lot of students the community colleges is the pathway even to get into
a four year university.
Right. And
if you can make that free then they can transfer credits, and then the fewer
classes you have to take at the four year institution which is more expensive,
you know, the less that you're gonna have.
It may turn that your siblings, some of them, if they don't get scholarships,
may have to use this community college route first.
It's still gonna be a good investment for them though.
There is a difference of about $28,000 a year, between
the average salary of somebody who's a college grad and somebody who's not.
I mean, it's a huge spread.
So even if you're taking on debt, it's still gonna pay off.
Previous generations, they had no debt.
And as a consequence, earlier on they could start buying a home, or
they could start a business.
Mm-hm. Yeah.
You know, they were just able to save money.
And for my generation, even, but
certainly the folks coming behind me, a lot of folks, you know,
they're in their 40s and they've still got loans that they're paying on,
which means that, you know, where that money could have been used for
them to start a, start a life, you know, might have been different.
I have a question, if I'm allowed.
Of course.
America used to fund,
you were mentioning a well, the states used to fund education a lot more.
America used to fund education a lot more.
And now, we have a system where the government actually makes money off of,
of the federal wealth.
How do we get back to funding education and,
off the money that in many cases has already been spent.
Well, couple things I'd say.
First of all, at the state legislative level, governors and
state legislators have to understand that probably the most important
competitive advantage they now have is the quality of their workforce.
Mm-hm.
So you are defeating yourself if you're cutting back on education spending,
and it's important for higher education.
But they used to know that.
What happened?
Well, part of what happened was the, the no tax mentality locked in.
Once you started capping revenues, at the same time
as things like three strikes are out, criminal laws we've got into place.
Now you've got a huge demand for more prison cells.
That money starts getting siphoned off into a different place.
Healthcare costs start going and
fairness to a lot of states they had to figure out how to pay for Medicaid.
So all those dollars start moving away from higher education.
And you know, the idea of charging tuition and
putting the burden back on the user, the student, that became the,
the path of least resistance from a lot of universities.
Now, you can make that up, by raising taxes.
But once again it comes down to the choices that we make as a society.
Do we think this is important enough that we want to make that investment.
And I think we should.
Not everybody's gonna have to have a four-year degree.
But everybody's gonna have to have something about what
they were doing in high school.
Unless, you know, unless you're Lebrun James, or, you know, or Kanye.
Anyone have a last question for the President?
Suddenly, we're out of time.
I was just wanting to know what you were hoping to get from talking to students
in Atlanta.
You know the, I'll be honest with you, some of it's completely selfish on my part
when I talk to you guys I, I I get inspired.
You know, I get excited about what the future holds because, you know, I'm,
I'm now 53.
Malia's starting to look at colleges now.
So I've got a little bit of perspective.
And when I talk to you guys I, I, I get inspired.
You know, I, I get excited about what the future holds.
The world's in good hands.
We got, we got a next generation of people who are gonna do great stuff.
And that makes me encouraged.
You guys, you guys encourage me.
Thank you. All right?
Thank you, Mr. President for taking the time.
I enjoyed it.
Thank you.
You guys want to take a picture together?
Yes.
Just, just so you can send it to mom.
Oh, yeah.
Hey mom.
All right, everybody say cheese.
Cheese.
When she selects nuance it's, you know?
Cheese.
We good? Okay, we got it.
Thank you.
Fantastic.
Thank you for coming into our, our studio.
Good luck to you.
Thank you.
Good to see.
Congratulations your parents must be so proud of you.
It's funny. Take care.
All right.