Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2014

Floor Speech

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about one of the great crises facing our country; that is, the high cost of college, and the fact that hundreds and thousands of young people who are bright and wish to get a higher education have now decided that, because they do not want to leave school deeply in debt, they are not going to go to college. What a loss that is, not only to the individuals and the enhancement of their own lives, but it is a loss to our Nation because in a highly competitive global economy we need the best educated workforce possible. The fact that college is becoming a distant dream--an unreachable dream--for millions of families is a horrendous situation which this Congress must address.

Over the last 10 years, the cost of attending a public 4-year college has increased by nearly 35 percent at a time when middle-class incomes have remained flat and, in fact, many families have seen a decline in their incomes. Of the students who do go to college, hundreds of thousands graduate with significant debt--on average, over $27,000.

This morning I was talking to a staffer of mine who is $119,000 in debt. And what was her crime? How did she accrue that debt? Did she go on a spending spree? Did she lose her money in a gambling casino? Her crime was that she wanted to go to law school, and she came out of law school $150,000 in debt. Today that is down to $119,000. I have talked to doctors and dentists who are now several hundred thousand dollars in debt.
The important point to make is there was once a time in the United States when that kind of college and graduate school indebtedness did not exist. Only a few decades ago this country made a commitment to our students that if you worked hard, if you studied hard, and if you wanted to pursue a higher education, you could do so at little or no cost. That was what we used to do. Unfortunately, in that very important area we have regressed, and regressed significantly.

Until the 1970s, at the City University of New York, one of the important and best educational systems in the country, the cost was completely free. The University of California system, one of the largest and best university systems in the world, did not begin charging tuition until the 1980s. In fact, in 1965, average tuition at a 4-year public university was $243.

We know we are living in a highly competitive

global economy, and if our Nation is to succeed, we need to have the best educated workforce in the entire world. But the sad truth is we are now competing against other nations around the world that make it much easier for their young people to go to college and graduate school than is the case in the United States of America.

According to a report released last year by the OECD--the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development--the United States was one of the few advanced countries in the world that did not increase its public investment in education over the last decade.

From 2008 to 2010, most advanced countries experienced significant economic decline as a result of the Wall Street collapse. Despite that, the vast majority of countries increased educational spending by 5 percent or more. The United States was one of the few nations to decrease overall educational spending.

I live about 1 hour away from Canada in northern Vermont. In Canada, average annual tuition fees were $4,200 in 2010--roughly half of what they were in the United States--and yet the OECD says Canada is one of the most expensive countries for a student to go to school.

Germany, an international competitor of ours, is in the process of phasing out all tuition fees. Even when German universities did charge tuition, it was roughly $1,300 per student.

According to the European Commission in 2012, the following countries do not charge their students any tuition--and these are countries we are competing against. These are countries where young people go to college without any out-of-pocket expenses. Those countries are Austria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden.

In Europe, university systems enjoy a very high level of public funding. The EU average is 77 percent. In other words, in countries throughout Europe--Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and all of the rest--what governments understand is that investing in higher education is terribly important for the individual students and their families. But, in addition, it is enormously important for the competitive capabilities of those countries.

So countries such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, each put in more than 88 percent of public funding into their universities. In the United States, the number is 36 percent. Countries all over the world that don't provide free higher education pump significantly more into their university systems than we do.

The result is several very significant points. First, we have many working-class and middle-class young people who are looking at the economic picture we face as a nation and looking at their own lives, and they are saying: Do I want to go to college and leave school $50,000 or $60,000 in debt? How am I going to pay off that debt once I leave school?

Many of these young people, tragically, are saying: I don't want to take that risk. I don't want to leave school deeply in debt. I will not go to college.

What a tragic situation that is for our entire country, because we are losing the intellectual potential of all of those young men and women.

Second, those who do go to college are coming out of school with an incredible chain of indebtedness around their neck, which impacts every aspect of their lives. It determines what kind of jobs they will get. Will they do the job they had hoped to do their whole lives--their life's dream, the work they were looking forward to doing or are they going to gravitate to those jobs which simply pay them a lot of money and enable them to pay off their debt?

For the first time in our country's history, American families have more student debt than credit card debt, and that is an extraordinary reality. All over this country families are struggling with debt in a way they never have before. The average loan balance for American graduates has increased by 70 percent since 2004. Average student debt is now near $27,000. In Vermont, it is even higher at $28,000. One in eight borrowers is carrying more than $50,000 in student debt. The percentage of families in the United States with outstanding student debt increased from 33 percent in 2005 to 45 percent in 2010.

The bottom line here is we have a huge crisis which is impacting millions of individual families and individual young people. But from a national perspective, it is a crisis which is impacting our competitiveness in the global economy.

There was once a time, not so many years ago, when we had the best educated workforce in the world and we had a higher percentage of college graduates than any other country on Earth.

That is not the case today. I think we have got to do some very hard thinking about the crisis regarding college affordability and the crisis regarding student debt.

If this country is to remain internationally competitive in the global economy, we need some bold ideas in terms of how we address these crises.

I can tell you that in Vermont, as I speak to young people around my State, this is the issue foremost on their minds. The young people in high school are wondering about how they can afford to go to college. The students in college are worried about how they are going to pay off their college debt. Our job must be to say to every young person in this country that if you are a serious student, if you study hard, you are going to be able to get a higher education regardless of the income of your family, and you are going to be able to get the best education our Nation can provide you based on your ability and not on the income of your family.

This is an issue of enormous importance to individuals around the country, but it is an issue of huge consequence for the economic future of this country. So in the coming weeks I will be introducing legislation--I know there is a lot of other good legislation that is going to be coming to the floor--because this is an issue of huge consequence, and it is an issue that must be addressed.

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