[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000, Book I)]
[June 10, 2000]
[Pages 1116-1119]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]
Commencement Address at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota
June 10, 2000
Thank you very much, President Lewis. It's nice to be around someone who is not term-limited.
[Laughter] To the trustees and faculty members, including your longtime
faculty member and now your United States Senator, Senator Paul
Wellstone. It's nice to see you and
Sheila. Thank you for being here, both of
you.
I congratulate Bruno Nettl and George
Dixon on their degrees, and I thank the
Carleton community for making me welcome. I congratulate the student
speakers, Katy and Sachin and Faisal. They were
really, really, I thought, very good. I'm glad there was some break
between when they spoke and when I had to speak. [Laughter] Maybe you
won't remember how good they were, and I'll be able to get through this.
[Laughter]
I want to congratulate all the members of the class of 2000, your
families, and your friends, and I thank you for giving me the
opportunity to share this with you.
I've been hearing about Carleton for years. I have a staff member
and adviser, Tom Freedman, who is here with
me today, class of '85, and his college roommate, John Harris, who--he's on the other side in Washington. He writes for
the Washington Post. They're both here, over here to the left. So there
is life after college, and they have proved it.
And they told me about the motto, ``You are part of Carleton, and
Carleton is part of you.'' They also told me that Carleton is my kind of
place, a school that celebrates diversity, a school whose students and
faculty exemplify excellence without elitism, a school where the
president of the college gets to sing like Elvis. [Laughter]
I'm also very proud that someone painted my portrait on the water
tower, and I thank you for that. Now, I heard it wasn't the greatest
likeness in the world, but I still kind of wish you hadn't painted it
over. [Laughter]
I also got a souvenir from my stay here, and I want to show it to
you. Thank you. And someone asked me if I would give this fellow a ride
on Air Force One, to sort of add to the legend, you know? [Laughter] And
I thought, why not? He looks more like me than that guy on the water
tower did. I think I'll do that. [Laughter]
I do want to say I love the message that Faisal and Sachin gave about
building on our common humanity, and I wrote down what I thought was the
best line from Katy Beebe's talk, ``Use
cliches like they were meant to be used.'' I think that's pretty good,
because we all have them. [Laughter]
The truth is, I have been paying attention now to graduations for
quite some time. And you are graduating at a time which is different.
[[Page 1117]]
Yes, there are a lot of common elements in this ceremony. Yes, there are
a lot of common elements in your feelings. Yes, you're a remarkably
diverse group. I could tell that just by shaking hands with you and
exchanging a few words. One of you even asked me to change a Government
policy. [Laughter] Good job. You have to ask Senator
Wellstone. It's an act of Congress now. I
can't change it. [Laughter]
But the truth is, this year marked more than a millennial turning of
the calendar. This country and the world have entered an era that is
different, in the way we work and live and relate to each other and the
rest of the world.
For us, it's a time of unparalleled promise. We have the strongest
economy we've ever had and the longest expansion in history, the lowest
minority unemployment rate ever recorded. And yet, it's also a time of
increasing social cohesion: the poverty rate at a 20-year low; the
welfare rolls at a 32-year low; the crime rate at a 25-year low. It is--
in my lifetime, anyway--the only time we have ever had at once so much
economic prosperity and social progress and at the same time so little
internal crisis or external threat to our existence. We have an
opportunity to shape a world, therefore, that is more free and more
decent than ever before.
I can't help noting that this is the one-year anniversary of the day
when the Serbian troops accepted NATO's terms and began to withdraw from
Kosovo,* and we reversed the tide of ethnic cleansing and religious
cleansing that was present when almost a million people were driven from
their homes. We still have 5,500 Americans there with troops from 39
nations. Almost all of the refugees have gone home. They're going to the
polls for the first time in history this fall. So I'm very proud of
that.
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*White House correction.
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But it shows that it's a very different world. Not so many years
ago, it would have been unthinkable that America would be part of a
multinational force deployed just to stop people from being murdered or
uprooted because of their race or ethnic background or religion, and I'm
glad we did it.
The world is moving to the beat of two great forces: globalization
and the revolution and knowledge of information technology, the
biological, environmental, and material sciences. And our whole pulse is
quickening with all this new discovery and interaction.
I have worked very hard to prepare this country for the 21st
century, and now it belongs to you, and it's up to you to decide what to
do with it. I hope very much that you will use this moment to deal with
the big challenges and the big opportunities that are still out there
for us: to bring prosperity to people and places that are still poor and
haven't been caught up in this recovery; to end child poverty and give
all our children access to a good education; to give families the time
and tools they need to balance their work at home and their work at
work; to deal with the challenge of the aging of America; to reverse the
tide of climate change; to put a human face on a global economy; to
maximize the potential of science and technology and minimize its new
risks; to build one America across all the lines that divide us; and to
build a world where the forces of peace and prosperity and humanity are
stronger than the old demons of war and disease and poverty.
Now, you have a chance to do that, in no small measure because you
spent the last 4 years here. And I want to talk just very briefly today
about one specific subject, our common obligation to give all young
people the chance you've had to develop the abilities, the
understanding, the feelings, the outlook that you have developed here in
your years at Carleton.
It's important because in the world we live in, it's the only way to
guarantee our Founders' dreams of opportunity for all, so it's important
individually. But from my point of view, it's even more important
because unless we can more generally spread the benefits of education,
your generation will not be able to build a future of your dreams.
Two centuries ago, opportunity meant having a chance to carve out a
farm on the forest frontier. A century ago, it meant a chance to work in
a factory with reasonably decent conditions and give your children a
chance to get a high school education. Today, opportunity requires the
constant ability to learn and relearn, to master new tools and new
technologies, to think broadly, to adjust quickly, to put things in
context. It means every American needs more than a high school
education. It means a college education is not a luxury.
In the coming years, the number of new jobs requiring at least a
bachelor's degree will grow twice as fast--more than twice as fast--as
those that don't. The three fastest growing occupations
[[Page 1118]]
require at least a bachelor's degree, and their pay, of course, is much
better than average.
So I have a simple message today, which is that our country cannot
afford to leave any students behind simply because they can't afford to
pay for college.
I came from a family where nobody had ever gone to college before,
and yet, from the time I was a little boy, I never had any doubt I was
going, because that's what my family told me I was going to do. And
thanks to my family and scholarships and loans and jobs, I got
opportunities that eluded all my parents' generation and, unfortunately,
eluded all too many of my contemporaries in high school. When I became
President, I was determined to do what I could to give every student
that chance. I am well aware, if it hadn't been for that chance that I
had so long ago now, to go to school, I wouldn't be standing here today.
So, what does it mean to give every young person the chance to go to
college? First, we have to begin at the beginning. We've worked on
education reforms to make sure all of our kids start school ready to
learn, finish high school ready to succeed. We've expanded early
childhood education; supported higher standards, more choice, and
greater accountability for results in our schools; extra help for kids
who need it, from after-school to summer school to mentoring programs;
new efforts to attract talented teachers, reduce class size, modernize
classrooms, connect all of them to the Internet. That's the first part
of this.
But the second thing we've tried to do is to open the doors of
college to every American. In 1993 we created something called the
Direct Student Loan Program. It has lowered the cost of all borrowing
and all loan programs and saved America's students, in lower interest
costs and charges, $9 billion over 7 years. That program also allows
students to pay back their loans as a percentage of their income.
In 7 years, we expanded Pell grants more than 40 percent and
increased the work-study program so that now a million young college
students are in work-study. On a thousand campuses, a lot of them are
earning money by teaching young children to read in elementary schools.
AmeriCorps is now giving 150,000 young people a chance to earn money for
college and serving in their communities. Education IRA's now let
families put savings in IRA's and then withdraw them for college
expenses tax-free.
We created the $1,500 HOPE scholarship tax credit to make the first
2 years of college as universal as high school and to help families
afford the last 2 years, as well as graduate school and job training. We
set out to launch a lifetime learning tax credit which provides a 20
percent credit against tuition and fees. Now, this year alone--those
things were done in '97--well over 10 million Americans will use HOPE
scholarships and lifetime learning credits to open the doors of college
and opportunity.
In the past 7 years, most of which we spent trying to get rid of the
deficit, America has more than doubled college aid, the greatest
expansion since the GI bill 50 years ago. It has proved to be a great
investment. Today, coincident with this speech, I am releasing a report
which demonstrates that as student aid has increased, so has college
attendance, now to record levels. Fully two-thirds of our high graduates
go straight to college. That's an all-time high. And for the first time
in history, a majority of young African-Americans are enrolling in
higher education.
The report also documents what you already know: The value of a
college education in sheer economic terms is going up. The earnings gap
between those who have a degree and those who don't is growing
dramatically. Over the course of a career, a person with a bachelor's
degree will earn, on average, $600,000 more than a person who has a high
school diploma. The return on a college investment is now nearly double
the stock market's historical rate of return.
Now, this report, on balance, is good news. But it has some sobering
information. With all the new financial aid and even though the rise in
tuition costs have slowed over the past few years, most families still
have to stretch to pay the college bills. Over the past 20 years, the
cost of college has quadrupled. I'll bet there are a lot of parents here
who have taken second mortgages or second jobs to help pay those tuition
bills.
So I'd like to do one other thing in this area before I go, and I
hope the Congress will do it this year. I would like to build on the
success of the HOPE scholarship and the lifetime learning credits with a
$30 billion college opportunity tax cut. It would allow families,
whether they're in the 15 percent or the 28 percent tax bracket,
[[Page 1119]]
to claim a tax deduction worth up to $2,800 for up to $10,000 in college
tuition costs. It would make a big difference to a lot of families in
this audience today, and I think it ought to be done.
Again I say, I know it's important for individual opportunity, but
we have to recognize that we're living in a time when investment in
human capital is even more important than investment in physical
capital. This would be some of the best money this country ever spent.
I also hope we'll do more this year to help young people out there
who are still, believe it or not, unaware of how important and how
possible college is. Maybe nobody is pushing them to take the classes
they need, or they don't know how to get the financial aid. I have
asked, and I ask again, the Congress to work with us to expand our
initiatives, called GEAR UP and TRIO, to reach out to students as early
as the sixth grade to give them the dream that they can go to college
and to determine to do what it takes to succeed once they get there.
Now, if we do these things, we can provide more students with the
support they need, give more families the relief they need, give our
economy the skilled work force we all need, and give our Nation more
active, informed citizens. At long last, we've got the money to do it.
The only question is whether we have the vision and will to do it. We
owe it to your generation to do that.
Think about this. A hundred years from now, the Carleton class of
2100 will be sitting where you are. They'll look up at this podium, and
perhaps they'll see a President reflecting on the 21st century, the good
old days. I hope that he or she can say that we began this century in
the right way.
I offer all of you my congratulations for the challenges you've
conquered, the projects you've completed, the goals you've reached. You
should be very proud. And as you embark here, I hope you'll never forget
one other thing, implicit in what all other speakers have said. All your
individual lives will unfold in the context of community, your local
community, your national community, and increasingly, the global
community. If you want to make the most of your own lives, you have to
give something to all of your communities.
As the years pass, I am convinced that your generation will be
judged most, and you will tend to judge yourselves most, on the ways in
which, large and small, you give something back to the whole. If you do
that, then you will be more than leaders in arts and science, business
and industry. You will be great citizens of our Nation and the world.
I honestly believe the next 50 years can bring the greatest period
of peace, prosperity, and humanity the world has ever known. It depends
upon whether we do the right thing for the future and whether we
understand that our common humanity is far, far more important than all
the things that divide us.
May Carleton always be with you. Good luck, and God bless you.
Note: The President spoke at 10:38 a.m. in the Bald Spot Quad. In his
remarks, he referred to Carleton College president Stephen R. Lewis,
Jr., honorary degree recipients Bruno Nettl and George H. Dixon, and
students Katherine Beebe, Sachin Patel, and Faisal Mohyuddin; and
Senator Paul Wellstone's wife, Sheila.