With the race to succeed him well under way, President Barack Obama on Monday flew to where the much of the nation’s political spotlight is shining.
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The President was joined by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan to address college affordability at a high school in Des Moines.
Starting next year, students applying under the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) system for the 2017-18 school year will be able to do so beginning October.
That’s because Vice President Joe Biden hasn’t yet said whether he’s running for president. Clinton is also in Iowa on Monday, campaigning in the northwest of the state.
Later in the afternoon, the President spent more than an hour taking questions in a sweaty auditorium on a variety of subjects involving education. “That’s not the way we learn, either”, Obama said Monday in Iowa. “Right now, I’m going to try and stay out of the campaign season; partly because I can’t keep track of all the candidates”, he said, continuing a theme of speeches where he pokes fun at the crowded GOP presidential field.
“If you hear a candidate say the big problem in education is teachers, you should not vote for that person”, Obama said, calling teaching a tough but critically important job.
“I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative, or they don’t want to read a book if it had language that is offensive to African Americans, or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women”, Obama continued.
Obama separately hit Carson for saying he’d defund schools with political biases – “I have no idea what that means”.
For Obama, keeping a Democrat in the White House could be crucial to the longevity of numerous actions he’s taken while in office. The president said that since he was in Iowa to talk about education, “a great placed to start is the library”.
“I don’t agree that you when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view”, he said.
President Obama pushed higher education that won’t ruin the financial future of college graduates during a trip to Iowa today.
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The president’s comments on immigration came in response to a student who asked whether young people in the USA illegally qualified for financial aid. “I think it is wrong and I think we should do better, because that’s how America was made, by us caring about all our kids”.
