By: Mary Best
Opinion and Advisory editor
If the last sitting president to visit a college in your hometown was Millard Fillmore, it’s only natural to get excited when you find out the President of the United States is rolling in to talk about the increasing education costs.
That’s exactly what happened when The White House confirmed President Barack Obama’s Aug. 22 visit to the western and upstate New York area. It set local social media mavens on fire, who described instances of scrambling to get a ticket for speech or shot their mouths off about their dislike for Obama.
While many of the statuses and tweets I read focused on Obama’s rumored lunch stops or his confusion of Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown and Congressman Brian Higgins (D-Buffalo), others butchered his remarks on higher education, claiming he was all talk and no action.
“He can bring on the cheers of a crowd that love rhetoric but I still have yet to see this man ever tell anyone how he plans to change anything,” ranted a Facebook friend on Aug. 22.
While I was unfortunately unable to get the day off from work and see the commander-in-chief myself, a quick read of his speech, specifically when he described his strategies for change, resonated completely differently with me.
“First, we’re going to start rating colleges not just by which college is the most selective, not just by which college is the most expensive, not just by which college has the nicest facilities — you can get all of that on the existing rating systems,” Obama said. “What we want to do is rate them on who’s offering the best value, so students and taxpayers get a bigger bang for their buck.”
After describing his other two proposals for change, Obama elaborated on each point and (to challenge the aforementioned Facebook commenter) provided specific examples of how to do so.
“Today, I’m directing Arne Duncan, our Secretary of Education, to lead an effort to develop a new rating system for America’s colleges before the 2015 college year,” Obama said.
Obama explained Duncan’s goal to host a series of public forums across America to receive public input on the best ways to rework the rating systems. Then, Duncan and his colleagues will collaborate with Congress to fix how federal financial aid is distributed in colleges.
That sure sounds like a plan of action to me.
Nothing that has to get through a partisan Congress is going to happen overnight, so there’s no point in trying to deface Obama when he introduces a new plan or new objectives.
Despite having sat in office for a previous term, it’s too early to say Obama’s doing a bad job with this particular issue or is operating on an “all talk, no action” style.
Give the man a chance and listen to what he has to say. Think all he did in that speech was give us information? Then take it as a heads-up on what he plans to do so you can vote for (or against, depending on your opinion) a representative with the same values as Obama on higher education in a future election.
He’s going to be in office until January 2017, so any haters might as well take a breather and let him explain what he wants to do. Don’t like that? Move to Canada.
bestmk10@bonaventure.edu
