lower-income students. i think one of the problems you run into is that pell grants sort of inadvertently subsidize universities, so you need a way to keep them accountable. it s one thing to bring students in. if you re bringing students in without making sure the students are able to success over the course of their two years or four years, it honestly is sort of not the best use of resources. my hope is that the administration, like goldie said, the administration announces something to help accountability and performance measures so we know when we re spending cash to help students go to these universities and colleges, that they re not then subsequently dropping out after a year or two. just to inform our viewers, we are looking at live pictures from the white house. what we seed on the left-hand screen is troy i mens, a new orleans native who graduated from new orleans east science and math academy in 2012. he is introducing the president and the first lady.
the resources we need to devote to them, but we must remember that education is a two-way bargain. and whiling there so much more we must do for our kids, at the end of the day, as troy described, the person who has the most say over whether or not a student succeeds is the student him or herself. ultimately they are the one sitting in that classroom. they re the ones who have to set goals for themselves and work hard to achieve those goals every single day. so my hope is that with this new effort, that instead of talking about our kids we talk with our kids, i want to hear what s going on in their lives. i want to inspire them to step up and commit to their education so they can have opportunities they never even dreamed up. i m doing this because that story of opportunity through education is the story of my
all of the limitless capacity that lies within all of our young people, no matter where they come from or how much money they have. troy is an example of why we all should care deeply about this issue, and troy and millions of others like him are why i care so much about this issue and why in the coming years i m going to be spending more and more of my time focusing on education. because as everyone here knows, education is the key to success for so many kids. my goal specifically is to reach out directly to young people, and encourage them to take charge of their futures and complete an education beyond high school. i m doing this because so often when we talk about education, where he talk about our young people and what we need to do for them. we talk about the programs we need to create for them, about
financial aid, but then no one is there to help them choose the right school or fill out the right forms. they will notice if we tell them that they re good enough to graduate from college, but then no college asks them to apply. no college invites them to visit their campus. and so we ve got to recommit ourselves to helping these kids pursue their education. as you discussed in your first panel today, one of the first steps is getting more underserved young people onto college campuses. the fact is that right now we are missing out on so much potential because so many promising young people, like troy, who have the talent to success, simply don t believe college is a reality to them. too many of them are falling through the cracks. you know that too well.
yourself. the same essential story that troy so eloquently told about himself. and the fact is, it s been getting harder to do that for a lot of people. it is harder for folks to start in one place and move up that ladder. and that was true long before the recession hit. and that s why i ve said that in 2014, we have to consider this a year of action, not just to grow the economy, not just to increase gdp and not just to make sure that corporations are profitable and stock market is doing well and financial system is stable, we ve also got to make sure that that growth is broad based and that everybody has a chance to access that growth and take advantage of it. we ve got to make sure we re creating new jobs and is that the wages and benefits that go along with the jobs can support a family. we have to make sure that there