Con­tin­u­ing my series on the accom­plish­ments of Pres­i­dent Obama’s first term, let’s take a look at one aspect of what the Pres­i­dent has done to help higher edu­ca­tion. This is old news. But it is impor­tant news, and it is not widely known or appre­ci­ated by many Amer­i­cans.

It’s hard to over­state the value of good edu­ca­tion. Accord­ing to this study released by the Social Sci­ence Research Coun­cil, the increas­ing lev­els of edu­ca­tion of will, on aver­age, increase an individual’s lifes­pan, decrease the like­li­hood of obe­sity, increase life­time earn­ings, decrease poverty lev­els, increase the read­ing pro­fi­ciency one one’s chil­dren, increase a ten­dency to vote, decrease like­li­hood of incar­cer­a­tion, increase prob­a­bil­ity of chil­dren hav­ing a healthy birth weight, and even decrease the mur­der rates in a community.

Even with the sky­rock­et­ing cost of obtain­ing a col­lege edu­ca­tion in Amer­ica, as a purely eco­nomic mat­ter, the life­time earn­ing poten­tial col­lege pro­vides results in its being worth the price of admis­sion. As recently as June of 2011, one eco­nomic ana­lyst con­cluded that col­lege is a bet­ter invest­ment that stocks, bonds, or even buy­ing a home.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Stu­dent loan debt is ris­ing at a prodi­gious rate, faster than any other cat­e­gory of house­hold debt. And we’re falling behind the rest of the world in grad­u­a­tion rates, for both high school and col­lege. As of 2011, all of these coun­tries now have a larger per­cent of col­lege grad­u­ates than the U.S.: Aus­tralia, Bel­gium, Canada, Den­mark, France, Ire­land, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Lux­em­bourg, New Zealand, Nor­way, Swe­den and the United Kingdom.

Worse: a report from the National Cen­ter for Edu­ca­tion Sta­tis­tics which ranked the knowl­edge of 15-​​year-​​olds in 70 coun­tries showed he U.S. ranked 14th in read­ing, 17th in sci­ence, and 25th in math­e­mat­ics. Our edu­ca­tional sys­tem is fail­ing our chil­dren. Between the high costs of col­lege and the low effec­tive­ness of pri­mary edu­ca­tion, it’s no won­der fewer Amer­i­cans actu­ally obtain a col­lege degree.

Most other first-​​world nations allow stu­dents to attend col­lege free. That is, the nation invests in its future by pro­vid­ing a col­lege edu­ca­tion to those who want it, and who pass the entrance exams. If you want to get into a pri­vate or more pres­ti­gious col­lege, you can still pay for it your­self, as you can here. But high-​​quality higher edu­ca­tion in Europe is accepted as a right. That’s a big part of why we’re falling behind; as with health care, Euro­peans are not indi­vid­u­ally sad­dled with the costs of what is, after all, a pub­lic good.

For what­ever rea­son (and feel free to dis­cuss it in the com­ments below), Amer­ica is unlikely, in the near future, to pro­vide higher edu­ca­tion to its cit­i­zens as a right, rather than a priv­i­lege. The sad part of that is that in an era in which edu­ca­tion is the key to a good job and a good econ­omy, when une­d­u­cated work­ers means a nation of burger-​​flippers rather than rocket sci­en­tists or entre­pre­neurs, when qual­ity edu­ca­tion could mean the dif­fer­ence between an econ­omy in col­lapse and one that remains a world leader, it seems ratio­nal to find ways to encour­age our young peo­ple to go to col­lege, and to help them pay for it.

In March of 2010 — the same week as the sign­ing of the Afford­able Care Act — Pres­i­dent Obama signed leg­is­la­tion that he called “one of the most sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments in higher edu­ca­tion since the G.I. Bill.” The new law will:

  • … elim­i­nate fees paid to pri­vate banks to act as inter­me­di­aries in pro­vid­ing loans to col­lege stu­dents. Pre­vi­ously, fed­eral stu­dent loans (that is, stu­dent loans funded by the fed­eral stu­dent loan pro­gram) went through pri­vate banks, which kept a cut of the money. Elim­i­nat­ing the mid­dle­man will result in $68 bil­lion in sav­ings over the next eleven years.
  • … use most of the sav­ings from the above to expand Pell Grants, which allow stu­dents with low income, who don’t qual­ify for loans, to attend college.
  • … make it eas­ier for stu­dents to repay out­stand­ing loans after grad­u­at­ing. Now, no more than ten per­cent (down from fif­teen per­cent) of a graduate’s income needs to go to stu­dent loan repay­ment, and any out­stand­ing bal­ance on the loan is for­given if not repaid in twenty years (down from twenty-​​five).
  • … invest $2 bil­lion in com­mu­nity col­leges over four years to pro­vide edu­ca­tion and career train­ing pro­grams to work­ers eli­gi­ble for Trade Adjust­ment aid.

The Pres­i­dent has taken other actions to improve Amer­i­can edu­ca­tion. In Decem­ber of 2011, he signed Exec­u­tive Order 13592, “Improv­ing Amer­i­can Indian and Alaska Native Edu­ca­tion Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Strength­en­ing Tribal Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties,” to improve edu­ca­tional per­for­mance and options for Native Amer­i­can and Alaska Native stu­dents from early edu­ca­tion through col­lege. In Octo­ber of 2011, the Pres­i­dent used an exec­u­tive order to help encour­age mil­lions of stu­dent loan bor­row­ers to con­vert loans they obtained through the Fed­eral Fam­ily Edu­ca­tion Loan (FFEL) pro­gram into direct lend­ing, to reduce their inter­est rates and sim­plify the repay­ment process.

While main­tain­ing the cur­rent Amer­i­can fetish for mak­ing Amer­i­cans pay for things on their own (instead of mak­ing some basic needs a right, rather than a priv­i­lege), Pres­i­dent Obama has made higher edu­ca­tion eas­ier to obtain, eas­ier to pay for, and there­fore more attrac­tive and more eas­ily obtained, for mil­lions of Amer­i­cans. We should be proud to have a Pres­i­dent who takes bold action to improve Amer­i­can higher edu­ca­tion, and to improve oppor­tu­ni­ties for America’s future.

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