The cost of college should never discourage anyone from going after a valuable degree.

At a time when going to college has never been more important, it's never been more expensive, and our nation's families haven't been in this kind of financial duress since the great depression. And so what we have is just sort of a miraculous opportunity simply by stopping the subsidy to banks when we already have the risk of loans. We can plow those savings into our students. And we can make college dramatically more affordable, tens of billions of dollars over the next decade.

When schools truly become centers of the community, where you have extraordinary teachers, the best teachers, the best principals, great nonprofit partners coming in during the non-school hours to support and do enrichment activities, social services, then those students will beat the odds, will beat poverty, will beat violence in the community, will beat sometimes dysfunctional families, and be productive citizens long term. They will go to college.

Far too many of our children today, our students, need remedial education. We have been lying to them. They're not really ready for college. That's not higher education's fault. That's our fault K-12.

City Year is taking on some of the toughest work in education.

States should not balance their budgets on the backs of students.

The jobs of the future, as you know so well, are knowledge-based. You need college-educated folks to do this work. And so the consequences for our country are absolutely devastating if we don't start to behave in very different ways.