Obama engages student journalists ahead of summit on community colleges

President Obama invited student journalists across the nation to discuss the state of higher education in the U.S. with him on Sept. 27, in a series of events targeted toward students and set to culminate in a White House summit on community colleges on Oct. 5.

College reporters from Radford University’s The Tartan, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s The Badger Herald, Penn State University’s The Daily Collegian and the University of California-Los Angeles’ Daily Bruin quizzed the country’s chief executive in a 29-minute conference call.

Touting his administration’s accomplishments — from health care and student loan reforms to increases in the amount of Pell grants available to students with financial need — Obama said that “[c]ommunity colleges are going to play a critical role in getting” to improving higher education.

But “it’s up to students to finish,” he added. “We can help remove some barriers, especially those who are earning degrees while working or raising families. So that’s why I’ve long proposed what I call a college access and completion fund.”

The fund would find and analyze new solutions toward retaining students and ensuring that they are able to complete college successfully. Additionally, Obama said that veterans from the current wars will be supported by a post-9/11 version of the G.I. Bill.

Notably, Obama also stressed the need for the DREAM (“Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors”) Act, which failed to make its way through the U.S. Senate attached to a defense authorization bill.

He said the bill “[w]ill stop punishing young people who … may not have been documented, but they’ve for all intents and purposes grown up as American young people.”

The proposal would provide a pathway for students, who were brought to the U.S. as children by their parents illegally, to become legal permanent residents through military service or by pursuing post-secondary education.

At the end of the call, Obama called on students to mobilize in the last five weeks before the November elections.

“We’ve got an election coming up,” Obama said. “I want everybody to be well informed and to participate. If you do, then I feel very optimistic about the country’s future.”

Jill Biden, a community college professor and wife of Vice President Joe Biden, will lead the White House summit on community colleges Oct. 5 beginning at 11:15 a.m. The opening and closing sessions will be streamed live at www.whitehouse.gov/live.