President Obama toured the country almost a month ago beginning at the State University of New York in Buffalo. He spoke with college students and other citizens about his plans to make College more affordable for this Nation, which he believes is currently filled with student loans and mounds of debt.

Within his plan Obama would impose three main points that would help the middle class. The main points of this plan are paying for performance, promoting innovation and completion, and ensuring that student debt stays affordable.

The financial aid aspect to this plan mainly falls within paying for performance, being that the colleges would then be ranked by their affordability to students, including the services that are provided by the financial aid office. This ranking system would look at the amount of access that students have to Pell Grants and the percentage of students that are already receiving them.

The ranking system would also look at affordability which would include the amount of scholarships that are provided, the average tuition and the average amount of loan debt. Lastly the plan would look at the outcomes, the amount of transfer and graduation rates, graduate earnings and advanced degrees of college graduates.

Obama’s plan is to have this rating system approved and in use by colleges before the 2015 school year. With this plan happening in the near future, Iowa State University will see the affects of this plan in at least the next couple of years.

Roberta Johnson, Director of Financial Aid, in the Student Financial Aid Office, feels that this plan will benefit students in a consumerism aspect, because it will give incoming students an understanding of how schools rank up to one another.

Although it is positive in this aspect, Roberta says, “Until it’s actually implemented it’s hard to say, because the devil is in the details and so it’s hard to say if the plan will be neutral, positive or negative to students and the university.”

There is one negative effect that Roberta could foresee, coming from this plan, for some Universities. That being the rating value in aspects of the graduation rate. Looking at who is coming in to the Colleges or Universities, and by this she point out that “some schools may take on higher risk students.”

Roberta means those that may be younger and unsure of their major or just general reason to drop out, opposed to some Colleges or Universities who may only take on those students who have a more insured future at the College or University.

Another possible consequence to this plan is grade inflation. Because this rating system recognizes the rate of Graduation, pressures could be put on Professors to pass students or give better grades than maybe a student deserves in efforts get that student graduated on time.

Erin Wilgenbusch, Senior Lecturer for the Greenlee School of Journalism and Communications, gives a professors point of view, saying she “would hope the University wouldn’t feel the pressure of legislation.”

Erin also noted that she would continue to hold the same standards of learning, for her students. With criticism and potential betterment of the financial system, it seems to be a waiting game on whether this plan could positively or negatively affect Iowa State University.