[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 33, Number 34 (Monday, August 25, 1997)]
[Pages 1255-1256]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
The President's Radio Address

August 16, 1997

    Good morning. As families across America start to prepare for the 
new school year, I'd like to talk about how students and parents can 
make the most of the historic higher education opportunities in our new 
balanced budget.
    The balanced budget I signed into law last week meets the Nation's 
obligation to offer opportunity to every American who's willing to work 
for it. It opens the doors to college to a new generation, with the 
largest investment in higher education since the GI bill 50 years ago. 
We have achieved a truly remarkable goal: For the first time ever, all 
children in America who study hard will have the opportunity to go on to 
college. Let me tell you just a few of the ways our budget will make 
that possible.
    First, the budget offers HOPE scholarships, a tax credit of up to 
$1,500, as much as the average community college tuition, that will help 
to make the first 2 years of college as universal as 4 years of high 
school are today.
    Second, the budget creates a new lifetime learning credit targeted 
at college juniors and seniors, graduate students, and adults who want 
to enhance their skills. Under this initiative, for example, a homemaker 
who wants to return to school full time to become a teacher can get a 20 
percent tax credit on the first $5,000 of her tuition bill. By the year 
2003, that credit will grow even larger, applying to up to $10,000 in 
tuition and fees.
    Third, beginning this January, parents and grandparents can withdraw 
money from their individual retirement accounts, without any penalty, to 
pay for higher education expenses. They can also open up brandnew 
education IRA's which will allow them to invest $500 per child every 
year to build up money, tax-free, for college.
    Fourth, our budget agreement provides the largest increase in Pell 
grants in two decades and gives about 350,000 more students the 
scholarships they deserve. These new initiatives will greatly expand 
educational opportunity for American families. But there is another 
crucial part of the college equation, and that is responsibility, the 
responsibility of every student and every parent to prepare for the 
future.
    As Hillary and I have learned, parents can't wait to plan for 
college until their children are in their junior or senior years of high 
school. In fact, education experts say it's essential that parents sit 
down with their kids as early as the sixth grade to start charting a 
course toward college. In the crucial middle school years, parents must 
encourage their children to take challenging classes. Research shows, 
for example, that students who take algebra and geometry by the end of 
the ninth grade are much more likely to go on to college than those who 
don't.
    In the new economy of the 21st century, what our children earn will 
depend more than ever on what they can learn. Almost 90 percent of the 
new jobs being created today require more than a high school level of 
literacy and math skills. Yet more than half of the people entering the 
work force are not prepared with these skills. So we still have a lot of 
work to do.
    Throughout the fall, my administration will work very hard to make 
sure that parents and students learn how to take advantage of the new 
higher education opportunities they now have. As a first step, Education 
Secretary Dick Riley and his staff have prepared an extremely useful 
guide for parents of children in middle school, junior high, and high 
school. It's called, ``Getting Ready for College Early.'' You can get a 
free copy by calling the Department of Education at 1-800-USA-LEARN, 1-
800-USA-LEARN.
    From the day I took office I have been working on a simple idea: 
When my child

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is my age, I want our country to be a place where every person who works 
hard has a chance to live out his or her God-given abilities and dreams. 
With the education opportunities contained in our historic balanced 
budget, we have taken a large step toward that goal.
    Thanks for listening.

Note: The address was recorded at 1:21 p.m. on August 15 in the 
Roosevelt Room at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on August 
16.