President Barack Obama intends to follow through with his initiatives to make higher education more affordable and to reward institutions that work to keep tuition down, as outlined in his 2013 budget released Monday.
Obama addressed colleges and universities directly Monday when he released the budget at Northern Virginia Community College, calling for an end to increasing tuition rates.
“We’re putting colleges and universities on notice: You can’t just keep on raising tuition and expect us to keep on coming up with more and more money,” Obama said. “So what we’re saying to states, colleges and universities — if you can’t stop tuition from going up, then funding you get from taxpayers will go down.”
His 2013 budget follows up on the call to action with the extension of the “Race to the Top” college affordability and completion program. The program was created in 2011 to cover K-12 schools, but the inclusion of higher education will encourage colleges to keep tuition low.
Universities and colleges taking “innovative steps” to minimizing tuition will benefit from the Race to the Top program, said Heather Higginbottom, deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, in a conference call Monday.
The “innovative steps” that will reap rewards were not explicitly detailed in the budget.
Higginbottom said federal aid already given to colleges and universities will be tied to tuition constraining efforts.
“If a school is not taking steps to ensure that tuition is not skyrocketing, that federal aid will be called into question,” Higginbottom said.
She said efforts to keep college affordable will be emphasized within state governments that control funding for public universities in their states.
Race to the Top will also reward colleges that “adapt reforms” to help students graduate on time.
Additionally, the 2013 budget proposes the use of $55 million “to test, validate and scale up effective strategies to improve higher education.”
The budget outlines Obama’s intention to be “first in the world” in the proportion of college graduates by 2020, but it does not elaborate on the specifics of the strategies that will be employed.
Past higher education aid efforts are sustained in the budget with potential reform to how the $10 billion in campus-based aid is distributed, such as doubling the number of on-campus jobs.
The Pell Grant program will remain funded through 2014-2015 under the new budget, which asks for the maximum award amount to be raised by $85 to $5,635. Maintaining that amount will continue “by generating savings elsewhere in higher education,” the budget says.
The budget also certifies the continuation of the American Opportunity Tax Credit, a college tax write-off worth up to $10,000 over four years of higher education. The credit would become permanent with the 2013 budget.
In further efforts to deplete college costs, Obama asked Congress to suspend an increase in college debt interest rates, which could double this summer.
 
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Contact Brian Sibille at [email protected]