Ryan Dorman
  Staff Writer

As the topics of the 2016 campaign come flowing in, student cost and accountability are catching the attention of college campuses around the United States.

2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has proposed her idea for the growing attention towards college debt.

Clinton has rolled out her proposal and is calling it “The New College Compact”. The plan has plenty of ideas that tackle the $1.3 trillion in college debt across the nation. Clinton wants to make college a debt-free and loan-free experience, offering two years of college to students for free.

The plan Clinton proposes will allow the debt-free college experience by  reducing a tax liability. Also similar to proposals from the Obama Administration, Clinton plans to make colleges more accountable for not graduating students to “good paying jobs”.

With the growing debates in the topic of college debt, a plethora of ideas and ways to handle the situation continue accumulating.

Many in the Republican Party have chosen to look at the institutions critically, including both the universities and the loan agencies. Marco Rubio has proposed an overhaul of the system, referring to the universities as a “cartel.”

He called for allowing creative financial measures to help students pay for college, including a financial measure that would allow students to receive loans in exchange for a share of their future earnings.

The Obama Administration, too, has opined on the issue of growing student debt and college accountability.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a speech at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County on July 27 addressing proposals and plans that are already in action to reinvigorate the original purpose of colleges and universities in the United States: a higher education.

In response to the public perception that the main focus should be making college a debt-free experience, Duncan said, “If we confine the discussion to cost and debt, we will have failed, because we will have only found better ways to pay for a system that fails far too many of our students,” Duncan states.

Duncan stresses that this is only one step needed to restore and re-imagine the American college experience.

In his address at UMBC, Duncan addressed a number of facts concerning college cost and accreditation. Duncan noted that over the past three decades, tuition at a four-year college has more than doubled and schools with a 10 percent graduation rate are still earning seals of approvals from accreditors.

The address continued with ways in which Duncan views the U.S. as skewing from the original intent and purpose of higher education. Duncan stresses that what is happening now could become a scheme for money over education if proper action is not taken.

Duncan’s plan for reshaping colleges and universities goes as follows: “First, dealing with cost and debt, second, focusing much more on outcomes and third driving desperately-needed innovation.”

Progress in this plan has already been made.  According to Duncan, “Since 2008, our administration has increased total aid available to students by over $50 billion and increased tax benefits and credits by an additional $12 billion, all part of a total of about $150 billion in grants and loans each year for higher education.” These huge steps in financial aid aim to check Duncan’s first step off the list: making college more affordable.

Proponents of focusing on the outcomes of college students by increasing responsibility and accountability say it means if students win, everyone wins.

With so much money being invested into Universities, students shouldn’t be held accountable when they don’t receive the quality of education that they pay for.

Duncan’s plan focused on redesigning the way in which universities and colleges prepare and educate students during their educational career. Duncan discusses making secondary education more flexible. With the flexibility of allowing students to get their credentials at anytime and place will give students opportunities to add to their education throughout their jobs and life.

Duncan ended his address with a quote from President Obama that follows: “Justice is not only the absence of oppression; it is the presence of opportunity.”