[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton (1994, Book I)]
[July 1, 1994]
[Pages 1174-1176]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



[[Page 1174]]


Remarks at the Presidential Scholars Awards Presentation Ceremony
July 1, 1994

    Thank you. Thank you, please be seated. Secretary Riley and Barbara 
Holt; members of the Commission on Presidential Scholars; most 
important, to all of you who have won these awards and to your family 
members, your teachers who are here, to your friends, I look forward to 
this event very much every year. And I am delighted to be here with you 
today and to look out at your faces and to imagine your futures. I don't 
see how anybody could be too concerned about the future of this great 
country, looking at you, reading your records, knowing what you have 
achieved.
    Today I also think we should reflect upon the God-given potential of 
all of our young people in this country and the importance that the rest 
of us must attach to providing the greatest education we possibly can, 
not only to those of you who have been outstanding always and who have 
won this extraordinary recognition but to all of the people in this 
society on whom the rest of us will depend to maintain America's 
leadership.
    This administration has worked very hard to try to do everything we 
could to give the American people the tools they will need to go 
confidently into the 21st century. I have spoken a great deal since I 
have been President about the importance of family and community, of 
work and responsibility. These things have a great deal to do with your 
future and the future of America.
    When I sought this office, I did it because I was concerned about 
the direction of our country, both economically and in terms of our 
community. I was afraid we were coming apart when we ought to be coming 
together. We seemed to be going in so many ways in the wrong direction. 
I had a strategy that was clear in my own mind for what we ought to do 
for the economy. I've been thinking a lot about it because, as some of 
you know perhaps, I will be leaving on July 5th to go to Europe for a 
meeting of the G-7, the world's largest industrial countries. And as I 
think back over the last year and a half, I can go to this meeting with 
a great deal of pride.
    We have 40 percent of the income of the world's largest industrial 
countries. But we've had 75 percent of the growth, created 100 percent 
of the new jobs. By cutting spending, by bringing our deficit down, by 
reducing the size of our Federal work force, by providing incentives for 
small business and working families, we've been able to create 3 million 
new jobs, reduce unemployment by 1.7 percent, have 3 years of deficit 
reduction for the first time since Harry Truman was President--none of 
you were born then--the last time America brought its deficit down 3 
years in a row.
    But if we do all those things, it still won't be enough unless we 
empower our people to make the most of their lives as we move toward the 
21st century, a time when information will double rapidly every few 
years, a time when the average person will change jobs seven or eight 
times in a lifetime. The whole question is whether all these changes 
will be friendly to most Americans or terribly, terribly threatening.
    Indeed, one of the main reasons I have fought as hard as I have for 
guaranteed health coverage for all Americans is that that will make our 
families more secure in the face of all these changes. But in the end, 
how well we do will be determined by how well we educate our people and, 
in the end, how well our people are capable of reeducating themselves. 
That's what Goals 2000 is all about. That's what the school-to-work 
transition bill is all about. And now today it has been announced what 
the consequences and the mechanisms will be for reordering the student 
loan program, something that was very important to me when I ran for 
President.
    I'd like to talk a little bit about that. I became very concerned 
when I was a Governor about the number of young people in my State who 
would go to school and drop out not for academic reasons but for 
financial reasons and the number of young people who said that they 
could no longer go to college because, believe it or not, in the 1980's 
the cost of a college education was just about the only really important 
thing that increased even more rapidly than the cost of health care.
    And so, we began to look at what options were available for opening 
the doors of college

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to all Americans. And one of the things that became clear to me is that 
the student loan program cost too much and the repayment terms were too 
stiff for a lot of our younger people, particularly if they wanted to go 
into work which might be immensely rewarding, terribly valuable to our 
society, but not particularly rich in terms of the salaries that were 
paid.
    So we decided to change the way the college loan program worked and 
to go to something called direct lending. The Secretary of Education had 
primary responsibility for figuring out how we would do that. Our new 
program means lower interest rates for college loans, lower fees, and 
much better repayment terms with the option for young people to string 
out their repayment over several years and to pay loans back based on a 
percentage of what they earn after they get out of college, not simply 
based on how much they had to borrow to afford the education that they 
got.
    It also means $4.3 billion in savings for taxpayers. During this 
first year we're going to make $1 billion in direct loans at over 100 
institutions of higher education. We've also designed the program so 
that 20 million young Americans who took out $50 billion in loans under 
the old system can switch to the new system. That is, if they want to 
pay back their loans at a lower interest rate over a longer period of 
time based on how much money they're making rather than how much they 
borrowed, they'll be able to do that.
    Well, we're going to lay out the details of how this will work in 
the next couple of weeks. But the point I want to make is this. It's a 
great thing when gifted young people can have ample scholarships to go 
to college. But we now know that we need 100 percent of our young people 
to finish high school and to get at least 2 years of further education 
if they're going to have a good chance to land a productive job with 
growing income prospects, not shrinking income prospects.
    And we also know that in every wealthy country in the world--this is 
something you'll have to worry more about than I have, when you're my 
age--there is a diversion in income. In other words, there is a widening 
gap between the wealthy and the poor within the wealthy countries. We 
know of no other way at this time to turn that around, other than to 
dramatically increase the education and skill levels of all of our 
people. Education is the great equalizer. It will change the job mix in 
America.
    So, I congratulate you here. I ask you to maintain your personal 
commitment to giving this country the kind of education system it needs 
to guarantee that every young American will be able to live up to the 
fullest of his or her God-given capacities and be able to have the tools 
needed to guarantee the security and the strength of our middle class 
way of life well into the next century.
    I also want to say one last thing in closing. This is a celebration 
not only of academic achievement but of creative ability and concern for 
others. Perhaps the signature program of this administration, when the 
history of our time here is written, will be the AmeriCorps program, the 
national service program, sort of a domestic Peace Corps, that this year 
will involve 20,000 young Americans working in community service and 
earning money against their further education. And the year after next, 
if we can just keep the funding up, we'll have 100,000 young Americans 
doing that, revolutionizing life at the grassroots level. To give you an 
idea, the equivalent of that in my time was the Peace Corps, which 
President Kennedy launched and which captured the imagination of every 
American. But there were never more than 16,000 young Americans in the 
Peace Corps in any given year. And we'll have 100,000 year after next. 
Why? Because learning is important, but giving is important as well.
    I want to recognize, if I might, just one of the scholars who's 
here. We could recognize many. But I wanted to mention one, not because 
she deserves to be mentioned over the rest of you but because everybody 
here and everyone within the sound of my voice needs to get the flavor 
of the extraordinary quality and character of the young men and women we 
honor today. Jessica Luterman, of Staples High School in Westport, 
Connecticut, organized a portable art therapy program for geriatric 
patients called Art On Wheels, which is now permanent. She did this 
while being an all-State athlete, a member of the All-USA Academic First 
Team, serving on the boards of her YWCA and the United Way. That's what 
we need more of in America. Stand up, Jessica. Where are you? Stand up. 
Give her a hand. [Applause]
    Like I said, if you all would just remember what got you here today 
and commit yourselves

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to trying to communicate that to the rest of this country, our future is 
in good hands.
    Congratulations, and God bless you all.

Note: The President spoke at 3:11 p.m. on the South Lawn at the White 
House. In his remarks, he referred to Barbara Holt, Acting Chair of the 
White House Commission on Presidential Scholars.