Biden talks about college affordability while in Ohio

Vice President Joe Biden answers questions from the crowd during an event to discuss college affordability at Lincoln High School in Gahanna, Ohio. Biden talked about the high cost of a college education and the Obama administration's efforts to make it more affordable. ASSOCIATED PRESS Enlarge

GAHANNA, Ohio — It’s time to restore “the bargain” with middle class America that anyone who wants a college education should be able to afford one, Vice President Joe Biden told a senior class at a suburban Columbus school Thursday.

“If you took out of the American dream the promise of access to college, how much have you broken the dream?” he asked.

Mr. Biden was accompanied by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who has funneled $400 million in federal stimulus Race to the Top funds to Ohio in recognition of state efforts to reform K-12 schools.

The funding started under former Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat, but has continued under Republican Gov. John Kasich, who has publicly praised Mr. Duncan for the administration’s support of charter schools and performance-pay measures for teachers.

The Gahanna Lincoln High School has been rated “excellent” under Ohio’s school report card for nine consecutive years. It was selected for Thursday’s visit because of its 95 percent graduation rate and 86 percent higher-education attendance rate.

Mr. Biden said that he and President Obama owe their successes to their educations.

“We would never be in the positions we’re in now if not for the help each of us had to get in scholarships, loans, grants to get our education. No possibility…,” Mr. Biden said. “It is about the bargain, a bargain in place the last 50 years that if you worked hard, played by the rules, helped increase productivity in America, you got a piece of the action. You benefited. You were able to rise with the tide.”

Mr. Biden told nearly 800 students, parents, teachers, and others gathered in the school’s gymnasium plus an overflow crowd in the auditorium that tuition in Ohio has doubled since the Lincoln seniors were born.

“I’m just firmly convinced we have to educate our way to a better economy…,” Mr. Duncan said. “Some form of higher education has to be the goal… Whatever it takes, you get across that finish line.”

He pointed to the Obama administration’s emphasis on PELL financial aid grants to college students and its removal of banks as a middleman in the processing of student loans as ways of trying to keep the cost of a college education under control.

He also noted the Obama initiative that caps the repayments of those loans to no more than 10 percent of a graduate’s disposable income and then further ties those payments to the amount of the salary the graduate’s job pays.

Vice President Biden mixed campaign business with his official taxpayer-financed event while in the Columbus area. Just two weeks into 2012, both President Obama and Mr. Biden have visited a state considered a must-win for the President’s re-election chances.

Mr. Obama visited Shaker Heights High School near Cleveland last week to announce his controversial recess appointment of former Ohio attorney general Richard Cordray as the nation’s new consumer watchdog.

“It is clear that this administration has abandoned governing and gone completely into campaign mode with one thing in mind, saving Barack Obama’s job,” said Republican National Committee spokesman Ryan Tronovitch.

“Instead of lavish fund-raisers and campaign speeches, Barack Obama and his top surrogates should be more concerned about getting our economy back on track and putting the millions of unemployed back to work,” he said.

Meanwhile, Republican candidates have focused their attentions on early caucus and primary states, currently South Carolina, even though Ohio voters will begin casting their own absentee ballots as early as the end of the month for the March 6 primary election.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) attended Thursday’s event. Republicans made much of his absence from the Obama event last week, something Mr. Brown attributed to scheduling conflicts.