Washington, DC – Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered remarks on higher education on the floor of the Senate today as the debate begins about the Higher Education Reconciliation Bill of which Senator Clinton is a co-sponsor.
[A transcript of Senator Clinton’s remarks is below]
I am delighted to come to the floor and talk about this extremely important piece of legislation. And I thank our leader and a great advocate on behalf of education, the Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, Senator Kennedy.
This bill really represents a tremendous victory for students, for their families, for higher education, for the future of the American economy, for millions of families who still struggle to pay for college and for millions of young people who will not only carry forth from their education a degree, but on average, more student debt than any graduates who came before them.
Most of all, this bill is a victory for that young boy or girl who is thriving in school, who might one day wish to attend college and fulfill his or her God-given potential, but worries that such a wish is beyond his or her reach, that it's just too expensive to realize.
I want to commend the members of the committee on both sides of the aisle for the great work that has been done bringing this bill to the floor. I was thrilled with many of the provisions, some of which I've worked on ever since I came to the Senate, particularly focusing on nontraditional students who more and more are becoming the norm; older students, married students, single-parent students, who often have found that there were barriers to their accessing whatever help was available from the federal government programs to continue their education.
I'm also personally just thrilled at what we've done for homeless and foster youth. This has been a passion of mine going back to my years as a law student when I first started representing abused and neglected children-- children who ended up in the foster care system, all the way through my time in the White House, where we were instrumental in working with the Congress in passing landmark legislation to make adoption easier, to try to make the foster care system more responsive to the needs of the child and to accelerate decisions being made as to whether or not a child would ever realistically be able to return to his or her biological family-- to my years in the Senate, where we have continued to try to help students who are in the foster care system as they age out.
As Senator Murray pointed out, when you turn 18 or graduate from high school, whichever comes first, still in many states in our country, you are no longer eligible for the foster care system. And what that has meant is that a social worker usually shows up at the foster home with a big black garbage bag and tells the young man or woman to put his or her belongings into that bag because they are no longer able to live in a foster home with state support.
For many young people whom I've been privileged to know, some of whom have interned for me, have worked for me in my office here or in my office in the White House, they were the lucky ones. You know, they had the right combination of personal resilience and ability combined with mentoring and some breaks along the way that enabled them to complete high school and often go to college at great cost. Many of them had nowhere to go during summer vacations or Thanksgiving or Christmas or any other break in the academic schedule. Some of them hid themselves in the dorm. Some of them stayed in bus stations or airports. Some of them prevailed upon a friendly professor or fellow student to take them in. So by recognizing the special needs of these special students, we really do a very important piece of legislative business that has a big heart in it. And I thank my colleagues who worked with me and others to make this happen.
When we think about the importance of college, it's hard to really grasp the fact that most young people in our country will not go to college and graduate. The college-going rate has been pretty stagnant now for about 20- 30 years. And as the cost of higher education has gone up, it's become even more difficult for young people to work their way through to afford the increases in tuition, room, and board. But the investment in college still remains a very good one. Each additional year of education after high school increases an individual's income by 5 to 15 percent. A college degree will enable an individual to earn close to $1 million more in the course of a life's work than those who have only a high school diploma. It is no coincidence that the rise of the American middle class coincided with the explosion of college attendance. It unlocks economic potential and it gives students access to the American dream, to a career and a life that they then can build.
But, as I say, unfortunately in the past 25 years, the cost of college has risen faster than inflation. College costs have tripled over the past 20 years, and as the costs spiral upward, so does the size of the loans and the loan payments that are necessary. Students who borrow take out loans averaging $15,500 while attending public colleges and universities and almost $20,000 while attending private schools, twice what they would have borrowed just ten years ago. At New York University in Manhattan, 60 percent of students graduate owing an average of $27,639. At Idaho State University, 69 percent of students graduate owing an average of $29,467. And at the University of Miami in Florida, whose President served with such distinction in this town as the Secretary of Health and Human Services for eight years, 58 percent of the students graduate owing an average of $31,723.
Now, this debt limits students' options and damages their financial futures. It really is a chain around their ankles as they end their education and go out into the world of work. With this reconciliation bill, we are cutting that chain. This bill will provide $17.3 billion in student aid, the largest increase in student aid in more than a decade. And it will provide this aid without raising federal taxes one dime.
First, the Higher Education Reconciliation Bill increases the purchasing power of the Pell Grant, which helps the lowest income students offset the cost of college. It's no secret to anyone in this chamber the purchasing power of the Pell Grant has declined dramatically from nearly 60 percent of the cost of a public school 20 years ago to only 36 percent today. This legislation provides the largest Pell Grant increase in more then a decade, increasing the maximum Pell Grant to $5,100 immediately and to $5,400 by 2011.
Now take my state, for example. This initial boost will provide over $200 million in increased grant aid to New York students for the 2007-2008 school year alone and $1.7 billion by 2013. The legislation also raises the income cut off for Pell Grants from $20,000 to $30,000, making many more students from many more families eligible to receive a Pell Grant.
Second, I'm very pleased that the Higher Education Reconciliation Act tackles an issue addressed in legislation I sponsored in the last Congress, called the Student Borrowers Bill of Rights. It provides protections for student borrowers while they repay their loans. It does so by capping monthly loan payments at 15 percent of the borrower’s discretionary income and providing several important protections to members of the armed forces and public service employees during repayment. This is critical to helping students manage their debt especially in the first few years after they graduate.
Third, I am pleased that the reconciliation bill also creates a new loan forgiveness plan through the direct loan program for public service employees.
I hear from many students in New York and around the country who would love to be teachers or police officers or firefighters or nurses or social workers or public defenders, but sadly they are so saddled with debt that such careers in the public arena seem like an impossibility for them. That is the wrong policy. We want to encourage more young people to go into public service. Our policies should respect that choice, not denigrate it.
Under the Loan Forgiveness Program the remaining loan balance on a loan is forgiven for a borrower who has been employed in a public sector job and making payments on the loan for 10 years. These jobs are essential to the communities they serve and I believe this program will encourage public service and provide an incentive for borrowers to pursue low-paying, perhaps, but vital professions to our country.
Mr. President, when I was getting ready to go to college many years ago, my father who was a small businessman -- a very small business -- said that he had saved enough money for me to go to college and he could pay tuition, room, and board, but if I wanted to buy a book I had to earn the money. And that was fine because I had worked ever since I was 13 in the summer and during vacations. So I worked my way through college with my family's help and when I graduated I decided I wanted to go to law school. I told my father that and he said that is not part of the bargain. If you want to go to law school you have to pay for it yourself. So I got a little scholarship and I continued to work year-round and I borrowed money directly from the federal government--the National Defense Education Act--something which many of us in this chamber took advantage of when we were pursuing our education. And the interest rate was very low. The repayment schedule was something I could handle. I didn't have to worry about anyone raising the rate on me or changing the terms on me. I just worked, first, for the Children's Defense Fund as a young lawyer, and then in public service here in Washington, working for the Congress, and then teaching law at the University of Arkansas and running a legal aid clinic. And during all those years when I was doing public service and academic work I could handle what my repayment obligations were.
I want that available for young people today. I think it's important, especially as we look at what's happening in government service and other public service professions to see how there is an aging that is going to eventually result in the loss of a lot of very experienced people.
I spent Monday at Binghamton University in New York, where we have the only PhD program in rural nursing. And I met with the nursing faculty and some of the nursing students. And it's a wonderful program, but the average age of a nurse in America is over 45. And the average age of a nursing faculty member is 54.
And we have many, many people who want to go to nursing school who don't have places for them even though they're qualified and we have a lot of others who worry about how they can pay for their education. And you can replicate that across every single profession that really falls into the service professions, the caring professions that we are seeing shortages of people going into because there's a disconnect between the salary that they are paid and the debt they have to incur in order to get the credential to be able to perform the public service.
So I believe in the long run this increase in student aid will pay for itself. Not only do college graduates earn more and therefore are able to pay back to society, but they are less likely to draw on public resources and they're much more likely to really make a contribution.
This bill has had great bipartisan support and I'm very proud to have worked on it and to see the positive changes that it includes. Clearly, this is something that I hope we will be able to pass by acclamation, Mr. President. I hope that after the difficulties and the debate and the disagreements of the last week over the very difficult issue of Iraq, I hope we come together around a fundamental American value, namely education.
We have the best higher education system in the world, it is a system filled with second chances for people who decide at the age of 18 or 80 that they want to pursue an education at a community college or a technical college or a four year college or a university. This is one of the really important aspects of American society and it's instrumental to the further development of our economy and the hope of a return to shared prosperity for our people.
Mr. President, I highly urge that all of our colleagues come together to support this Higher Education Reconciliation Bill to make higher education more affordable. It is good social policy. It is good economic policy. It is certainly good budgetary policy, and it makes a big difference to millions and millions of hard-working young people and their families.
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