Vice President Joe Biden was on his way to a prom years ago when he saw his father pacing outside. His father, it turned out, had just returned from the bank, where he was turned down for a loan to pay for Biden’s education at the University of Delaware. “I’m so ashamed,” Biden recalled him saying. The anecdote, delivered in a speech Monday to students at Florida State University, was used to promote President Barack Obama’s new college affordability plan — which would reward states for keeping costs low.
The plan earned Biden plenty of applause from hundreds of students at FSU’s basketball complex, but it had Florida university system leaders squirming. Obama is proposing giving less federal aid dollars to students who go to colleges that increase costs. But Florida legislators are now recommending hiking tuition, as they’ve done for the past several years.
