President Obama Attacks University Tuition, Calls For Stop To Rapidly Increasing Costs

President Obama on Friday called on Universities and Colleges to stop their rapid increases in the cost of tuition. In confronting those institutions the President promised to pull federal funds should universities find it necessary to increasingly raise the price of admission.

The speech came as President Obama spoke with a group of students at the University of Michigan. In his speech Obama noted that he was “putting colleges on notice” while promising that the era of tuition hikes is coming to an end.

“You can’t assume that you’ll just jack up tuition every single year. If you can’t stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down,” Obama said during his speech to students.

Obama spoke about his financial aid proposal which he first announced during Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Obama’s new plan goes after “campus based” aid such as Perkins loans and work study program. While $142 billion in federal grants and loans were distributed to college students in 2011 only $3 billion went to those program, a number Obama would like to increase to $10 billion annually.

In explaining the importance for a college education the President noted:

“In the coming decade, 60 percent of new jobs will require more than a high school diploma,” he said. “Higher education is not a luxury. It’s an economic imperative that every family in America should be able to afford.”

In speaking about the need to better monitor performance and tuition at American Universities Obama education secretary, Arne Duncan noted:

“Historically, we’ve funded universities whether or not they’ve done a good job of graduating people, whether or not they’ve done a good job of keeping down tuition.”

Do you think Universities should be penalized for continuing to raise tuition rates at increasing levels?