Marco Rubio Looks to Private Sector to Make Higher Ed More Affordable

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., continued his push for higher education reform, appearing on Fox News Americas Newsroom on Tuesday. Rubio offered a major speech on higher education on Monday at Miami-Dade College.

Asked about how to make higher education more affordable, Rubio offered his thoughts.

I think people have knowledge they have acquired by living life, by working, through volunteerism, Rubio said. They can acquire it by taking online courses. People should be able to get credit for that. I mean, how many people, for example, veterans, return from war knowing how to do all sorts of things, but in order to get a college degree, theyve got to sit in the classroom and take exams and an entire course, and pay for it on something they learned doing in the military or in other aspects of life. My point is that we need to have a flexible higher education system where people can get college credit toward a degree that gives you credit for all those things.

But we have a bigger problem, Rubio added. We have this rapid transformation in our economy. It is harder and harder to find a job these days if you dont have some sort of higher education. And yet higher education has become more and more expensive, and it is completely controlled by the existing colleges and universities who play an important role, but have a monopoly in controlling access. And as a result, we have a trillion dollars in student loan debt out there.

It's extremely expensive to go to college in this country right now," said Fox News Martha MacCallum. Again, I just have a couple of seconds on this, but a student investment plan that would get sort of the private financial sector involved in financing education?

It would allow students to basically have private investment groups invest in them, Rubio said. They pay for their education instead of taking out a loan. And in return, the student agrees, in a contract, to pay back that investment over a period of time through a percentage of how much they make. If that adds up to more than what they borrowed, then the investment group made a great investment. If it turns out less, then the investment didnt work out. But thats an alternative to loans. Again, the loans will still be there if thats what they prefer to have, but I think this will really help graduate students going into engineering and the sciences, for example.