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Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you, everybody. Everybody, please have a seat. Have a seat.
Welcome to the White House, everybody. And let me begin by thanking Troy and sharing
his remarkable story. I could not be more inspired by what he's accomplished and can't
wait to see what he's going to accomplish in the future.
My wife -- it's hard to speak after her. (Laughter and applause.) We were in the back, and Gene
Sperling, who did extraordinary work putting this whole summit together, said, "Everybody
is so excited that Michelle is here." (Laughter.) And I said, well, what about me? (Laughter.)
But you should be excited, her being here, because she brings a passion and a body of
experience and a passion to this issue that is extraordinary. And I couldn't be prouder
of the work she's already done and the work I know that she's going to keep on doing around
these issues.
She did leave one thing out of her speech, and that is it's her birthday tomorrow. (Applause.)
So I want everybody to just keep that in mind.
Now, we are here for one purpose: We want to make sure more young people have the chance
to earn a higher education. And in the 21st century economy, we all understand it's never
been more important.
The good news is, is that our economy is steadily growing and strengthening after the worst
recession in a generation. So we've created more than 8 million new jobs. Manufacturing
is growing, led by a booming auto industry. Thanks to some key public investments in advances
like affordable energy and research and development, what we've seen is not only an energy revolution
in this country that bodes well for our future, but in areas like health care, for example,
we've slowed the growth of health care costs in ways that a lot of people wouldn't have
anticipated as recently as five or ten years ago.
So there are a lot of good things going on in the economy. And businesses are starting
to invest. In fact, what we're seeing are businesses overseas starting to say, instead
of outsourcing, let's insource back into the U.S.
All that bodes well for our future. Here's the thing, though: We don't grow just for
the sake of growth. We grow so that it translates into a growing middle class, people getting
jobs, people being able to support their families, and people being able to pass something on
to the next generation. We want to restore the essential promise of opportunity and upward
mobility that's at the heart of America -- the notion that if you work hard, you can get
ahead, you can improve your situation in life, you can make something of yourself. The same
essential story that Troy so eloquently told about himself.
And the fact is it's been getting harder to do that for a lot of people. It is harder
for folks to start in one place and move up that ladder -- and that was true long before
the recession hit. And that's why I've said that in 2014, we have to consider this a year
of action, not just to grow the economy, not just to increase GDP, not just to make sure
that corporations are profitable and the stock market is doing well and the financial system
is stable. We've also got to make sure that that growth is broad-based and that everybody
has a chance to access that growth and take advantage of it. We've got to make sure that
we're creating new jobs and that the wages and benefits that go along with those jobs
can support a family. We have to make sure that there are new ladders of opportunity
into the middle class, and that those ladders -- the rungs on those ladders are solid and
accessible for more people.
Now, I'm going to be working with Congress where I can to accomplish this, but I'm also
going to act on my own if Congress is deadlocked. I've got a pen to take executive actions where
Congress won't, and I've got a telephone to rally folks around the country on this mission.
And today is a great example of how, without a whole bunch of new legislation, we can advance
this agenda. We've got philanthropists and business leaders here; we've got leaders of
innovative non-for-profits; we've got college presidents -- from state universities and
historically black colleges to Ivy League universities and community colleges. And today,
more than 100 colleges and 40 organizations are announcing new commitments to help more
young people not only go to, but graduate from college. And that's an extraordinary
accomplishment, and we didn't pass a bill to do it.
Everybody here is participating, I believe, because you know that college graduation has
never been more valuable than it is today. Unemployment for Americans with a college
degree is more than a third lower than the national average. Incomes -- twice as high
as those without a high school diploma. College is not the only path to success. We've got
to make sure that more Americans of all age are getting the skills that they need to access
the jobs that are out there right now. But more than ever, a college degree is the surest
path to a stable, middle-class life.
And higher education speaks to something more than that. The premise that we're all created
equal is the opening line in our American story. And we don't promise equal outcomes;
we've strived to deliver equal opportunity -- the idea that success does not depend on
being born into wealth or privilege, it depends on effort and merit. You can be born into
nothing and work your way into something extraordinary. And to a kid that goes to college, maybe like
Michelle, the first in his or her family, that means everything.
And the fact is, is if we hadn't made a commitment as a country to send more of our people to
college, Michelle, me, maybe a few of you would not be here today. My grandfather wasn't
rich, but when he came home from the war he got the chance to study on the GI Bill. I
grew up with a single mom. She had me when she was 18 years old. There are a lot of circumstances
where that might have waylaid her education for good. But there were structures in place
that allowed her then to go on and get a PhD. Michelle's dad was a shift worker at the city
water plant; mom worked as a secretary. They didn't go to college. But there were structures
in place that allowed Michelle to take advantage of those opportunities.
As Michelle mentioned, our parents and grandparents made sure we knew that we'd have to work for
it, that nobody was going to hand us something, that education was not a passive enterprise
-- you just tip your head over and somebody pours education into your ear. (Laughter.)
You've got to work for it. And I've told the story of my mother -- when I was living overseas,
she'd wake me up before dawn to do correspondence courses in English before I went to the other
school. I wasn't that happy about it. (Laughter.) But with that hard work -- but also with scholarships,
also with student loans, and with support programs in place -- we were able to go to
some of the best colleges in the country even though we didn't have a lot of money. Every
child in America should have the same chance.
So over the last five years, we've worked hard in a variety of ways to improve these
mechanisms to get young people where they need to be and to knock down barriers that
are preventing them from getting better prepared for the economies that they're going to face.
We've called for clearer, higher standards in our schools -- and 45 states and the District
of Columbia have answered that call so far. We've set a goal of training 100,000 new math
and science teachers over the next 10 years, and the private sector has already committed
to help train 40,000. We've taken new steps to help students stay in school, and today
the high school dropout rate is the lowest it has been in 40 years -- something that's
rarely advertised. The dropout rate among Hispanic students, by the way, has been cut
in half over the last decade.
But we still have to hire more good teachers and pay them better. We still have to do more
training and development, and ensure that the curriculums are ones that maximize the
chances for student success. When young people are properly prepared in high school, we've
got to make sure that they can afford to go to college, so we took on a student loan system
that was giving billions of dollars of taxpayer dollars to big banks and we said, let's give
that money directly to students. As a consequence, we were able to double the grant aid that
goes to millions of students. And today, more young people are earning college degrees than
ever before.
So we've made progress there, but as I've discussed with some of you, we're still going
to have to make sure that rising tuition doesn't price the middle class out of a college education.
The government is not going to be able to continually subsidize a system in which higher
education inflation is going up faster than health care inflation. So I've laid out a
plan to bring down costs and make sure that students are not saddled with debt before
they even start out in life.
Even after all these steps that we've taken over the last five years, we still have a
long way to go to unlock the doors of higher education to more Americans and especially
lower-income Americans. We're going to have to make sure they're ready to walk through
those doors. The added value of a college diploma has nearly doubled since Michelle
and I were undergraduates. Unfortunately, today only 30 percent of low-income students
enroll in college right after high school and, far worse, by their mid-twenties only
9 percent earn a bachelor's degree.
So if we as a nation can expand opportunity and reach out to those young people and help
them not just go to college but graduate from college or university, it could have a transformative
effect. There is this huge cohort of talent that we're not tapping.
Now, what this meeting today tells me is we've got dedicated citizens across the country
who are ready to stand up and meet this challenge. And what I want to really do is highlight
some of the commitments that have been made here today. So we know that not enough low-income
students are taking the steps required to prepare for college. That's why I'm glad the
University of Chicago, my neighbor, and the place where Michelle and I both worked in
the past, is announcing a $10 million College Success Initiative that will reach 10,000
high schools over the next five years. It's why iMentor, a mentoring program that began
15 years ago with just 49 students in the South Bronx, has committed to matching 20,000
new students with mentoring in more than 20 states over the next five years.
We also know that too many students don't apply to the schools that are right for them.
They may sometimes underestimate where they could succeed, where they could go. There
may be a mismatch in terms of what their aspirations are and the nature of what's offered at the
school that's close by. And they kind of assume, well, that's my only option. So UVA, for example,
is going experiment with new ways to contact high-achieving, low-income students directly
and encourage them to apply. Organizations like the College Board are going to work with
colleges to make it easier for students to apply to more schools for free.
I know sometimes for those of you in university administrations, the perception may be that
$100 application fees is not a big deal. But for a lot of these students, that's enough
of a barrier that they just don't end up applying.
Number three, we know that when it comes to college advising, and preparing for tests
like the ACT and the SAT, low-income kids are not on a level playing field. We call
these standardized tests -- they're not standardized. Malia and Sasha, by the time they're in seventh
grade at Sidwell School here, are already getting all kinds of advice and this and that
and the other. The degree of preparation that many of our kids here are getting in advance
of actually taking this test tilts the playing field. It's not fair. And it's gotten worse.
I was telling Michelle, when I was taking the SAT I just barely remembered to bring
a pencil. I mean, that's how much preparation I did. (Laughter.) But the truth of the matter
is, is that we don't have a level playing field when it comes to so-called standardized
tests. So we've got a young man here today named Lawrence Harris who knows this better
than most. Lawrence went to the University of Georgia, and like a lot of first-generation
college students it wasn't easy for him. He had to take remedial classes. He had to work
two part-time jobs to make ends meet. At one point, he had to leave school for a year while
he helped support his mom and his baby brother. Those are the kinds of just day-to-day challenges
that a lot of these young people with enormous talent are having to overcome. Now, he stuck
with it. He graduated.
But now he's giving back. He's made it his mission to help other young people like him
graduate, as a college advisor at Clarke Central High School in Athens, Georgia. And today
the National College Advising Corps, the program that placed Lawrence in Clarke Central, is
announcing plans to add 129 more advisors who will serve more than 80,000 students over
the next three years.
Finally, we know that once low-income students arrive on campus -- Michelle I think spoke
eloquently to her own personal experience on this -- they often learn that even if they
were at the top of their high school class, they still have a lot of catching up to do
with respect to some of their peers in the classroom. Bunker Hill Community College is
addressing this by giving more incoming students the chance to start catching up over the summer
before their freshman year. And we've got 22 states and the District of Columbia who
have joined together in a commitment to dramatically increase the number of students who complete
college-level math and English their first year.
So these are just a sampling of the more than 100 commitments that your organizations and
colleges are making here today. And that's an extraordinary first step. But we've got
more colleges and universities than this around the country. We've got more business leaders
around the country and philanthropies around the country. And so we have to think of this
as just the beginning; we want to do something like this again, and we want even more colleges
and universities and businesses and non-for-profits to take part.
For folks who are watching this who were not able be here today, we want you here next
time. Start thinking about your commitments now. We want you to join us. For those who
were able to make commitments today, I want to thank you for doing your part to make better
the life of our country -- because what you're doing here today means that there are a bunch
of young people, like Troy and like Michelle and like me, who suddenly may be able to see
a whole new world open up before -- that they didn't realize was there.
So I'll end with a great story that I think speaks to this. There's a former teacher here
today named Nick Ehrmann. Where's Nick? So here's Nick right here. Five years ago, Nick
founded a New York City nonprofit called Blue Engine, and they recruit recent college graduates
to work as teaching assistants in public high schools that serve low-income communities,
teaming up to help students build the skills they need to enter college ready for college.
The first group of students to work with those teaching assistants are seniors now. One of
them, Estiven Rodriguez, who also is here today -- where is he? There he is -- good-looking,
young guy right here. (Laughter.) Could not speak a word of English when he moved to the
United States from the Dominican Republic at the age of nine. Didn't speak much more
English by the time he entered sixth grade.
Today, with the support of a tightly knit school community, he's one of the top students
in his senior class at Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School, or WHEELS.
Last month, he and his classmates put on their WHEELS sweatshirts, unfurled a banner, waved
flags and marched down the streets of Washington Heights in New York City through cheering
crowds. You would have thought it was the Macy's parade. (Laughter.) But the crowds
on the sidewalk were parents and teachers and neighbors. The flags were college pennants.
The march was to the post office, where they mailed in their college applications. (Applause.)
And Estiven just heard back -- this son of a factory worker who didn't speak much English just
six years ago won a competitive scholarship to attend Dickinson College this fall. (Applause.)
So everywhere you go you've got stories like Estiven's and you've got stories like Troy's.
But we don't want these to be the exceptions. We want these to be the rule. That's what
we owe our young people and that's what we owe this country. We all have a stake in restoring
that fundamental American idea that says: It doesn't matter where you start, what matters
is where you end up. And as parents and as teachers, and as business and philanthropic
and political leaders -- and as citizens -- we've all got a role to play.
So I'm going to spend the next three years as President playing mine. And I look forward
to working with you on the same team to make this happen. Thank you very much, everybody.
(Applause.)