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President Obama continues to commit to cut college tuition growth by 50% over the next decade in all his recent re-election campaign. Even if he wins the elections, he faces huge challenges in his road towards the goal. On issues such as gridlocked Congress and dire state budgets, he has little or no control.

Students now find paying tuition fee much tougher and millions of students go into shock each year over the rising tuition fee that pushes them further away from their dream of completing education.
There has been a 40% rise in community college tuition fee says the College Board. This non-profit group that conducts the SAT exam says that there has been a 68% increase in four-year public colleges.

According to education experts, though our President’s goal is not unattainable, there are no concrete details on how he is going to face the harsh realities. Cash-strapped state budgets are one of the major concerns here for the public institutions.

During the housing bubble, many home owners lost value and lost their homes. They either did not pay any property tax or paid less. The same is happening with higher education today. States like Wisconsin and California are desperately trying to fill in gaps in the budget and one of the major casualties is education.

American Council on Education’s chief lobbyist Terry Hartle says that when things are going smooth, states are good to the universities and colleges and when the state budgets suffer, they are very harsh on higher education institutions.

Our President’s campaign official says that a new grant program will be initiated by Obama which will encourage institutions to promote new cost-cutting ideas. Universities will then enjoy many rewards that include easier methods for transferring community college credits to universities in an affordable manner.

In order to fund such a program however, our President has to cross the major hurdle namely the Congress. According to US PIRG, a consumer group’s higher education advocate Rich Williams, nothing can stop the Congress from investing in higher education if they decide to prioritize this field. They have the capacity to offer students affordable education by cutting college costs across the country.

Linking ability of colleges to control costs to higher education funding was one of the effective and controversial proposals put forth by our President this year. To bring this into practice again is a challenging preposition.

This move could affect students who are now benefiting from low-interest Pell Grants or Stafford Loans as most of the funding goes to them in certain universities and colleges. According to Hartle, Congress is against this because they feel that this is similar to giving food stamps that cannot be used at particular grocery stores. They feel that this move pertains to telling students that we will give you vouchers but you cannot spend them at certain places.

Using technological advances effectively to keep costs down in higher education is another area our President wishes to focus on. Online classes could be encouraged more and courses can be offered to anyone who has an internet connection.

How far his ideas are feasible and ready to be implemented is something we have to wait and see and then, there is the election hurdle he has to cross first.