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President Obama announced his plans to achieve skilled workforce in one of his State of the Union address. He tied his education plans more closely with economic plans than ever before. He believes that boosting the American middle class relies on building high-tech manufacturing industry in various fields like health, energy and telecommunications.

He emphasizes the importance of enhancing workforce skills to achieve such an expansion. He aims to give more importance to high school graduation, college enrollment and job training to attain skilled workforce. He knocked hard on increasing tuition fees and threatened universities that do not keep tuition under control to reduce government subsidies.

He stressed that the universities and colleges that are not able to graduate higher number of students, particularly low income students will see withdrawal of federal student financial aid. He called on Congress to prevent student loan interest rates from increasing in July.

Our President aims to reward colleges that keep their tuition fees under control and have higher graduation rates by offering more federal aid to them. Schools that act responsibly will get more federal aids than those that do not.

Obama’s plans were appreciated by higher education and training activists.  Rich Williams, one of the famous higher education advocates says that students are facing a lot of trouble due to struggling family finances, state budget cuts and uncertain job prospects. In this situation, President’s proposal to keep student loan interest rates low is really appreciable.

Andy Van Kleunen, executive Director of National skills Coalition said was paying attention to Main Street, when he proposed his plan to train two million workers. The gaps in the skill levels are documented in many industry surveys, especially the jobs requiring middle level skills need technical training. The demand for workforce training is high at all times.

Last year, Obama spent more time in plugging the “Race to the Top” competition grant program of the Education Department. He argued that the program should be a model for reshaping the “No Child Left Behind” program. This year, he did not mention about those programs. His comments were about elementary and secondary teacher training and evaluations. He did not even suggest the state waiver program for No Child Left Behind.

President Obama’s recognition for skill building programs gets positive reviews from many advocates. They feel that skill building programs are vital for advancing low income people to higher paying jobs. They also specify that government, education institutions and community organizations should collaborate to achieve this goal.

To reach President’s goals, we will need to deal with some problematic realities. More that 26 million adults lack high school degrees in the U.S and around 1.3 million students fail to graduate high school every year. Innovative education strategies can help students who have dropped out of high school earn a General Education Development (GED) and to enroll into community colleges.

Many states are now implementing programs to help adults earn a GED. Our President is expecting these types of innovative models to boost higher education attainment and results. These innovative solutions will work only if higher education is made really affordable for all.