Rick ScottVerified account

Students across the country are heading back to school, so there’s no better time to talk about our education system and how important it is to keep education affordable and attainable for every American student.

Here’s why that matters to me: I grew up in a poor family. We didn’t have much. My mom and my adopted father, who was a truck driver, worked hard to put food on the table and provide for my siblings and me.

She sacrificed so we could have the opportunities in life that she didn’t have, but we also had to work for them. She taught us to take responsibility for our own lives.

Because of her sacrifice, I lived the American dream. I started working when I was 7, worked hard in school, joined the Navy at 18, and went to college on the GI Bill.

The cost of a four-year degree has increased eight times, way more than the increase in wages. This is unsustainable and results in two drastically different but equally challenging problems.

First, a college education is becoming out of reach for more and more students. More and more students are losing out on their opportunity to live the American Dream.

Second, students who do go to a four-year college or university are becoming burdened with mountains of debt. Debt that is frankly unsustainable for people to pay off.

As Governor of Florida, I had two main goals: to keep college affordable for students and to realign the incentives in the higher education system to promote career readiness and skills training. My whole focus was to make sure students were able to get a job when they graduated.