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President Barack Obama will travel to Syracuse this week as part of a two-day bus tour to lay out his plan for reducing college costs. The president also has plans to stop in Buffalo, Binghamton and northeastern Pennsylvania.Obama will explain his ideas for reducing the costs and improving the value of a college education. The upstate stops are part of his recent effort to refocus on economic issues ahead of looming fiscal fights with Congress.You can find all of WRVO's coverage here.

Maffei says more should be done to make higher education affordable

Ellen Abbott
/
WRVO

President Obama was at Henninger High School in Syracuse on Thursday evening to discuss plans to make higher education more affordable for students. Congressman Dan Maffei, whose district includes Syracuse, says the president's speech included the introduction of a new college grading method that could influence how federal financial aid is distributed to the nation's colleges.

"I actually think it's going to be more along the lines of some of the things that U.S. News and World Report do, but something that is a little more standardized," Maffei said. "It gives us good metrics of whether colleges and universities really are providing the bang for the buck that they should be providing."

Maffei noted that the government has to do more to make college affordable for students, and that when they graduate from college they can use that education to get a good paying job. Obama's visit to Syracuse is part of a two-day bus tour. He was in Buffalo earlier on Thursday and will spend the night in Auburn before traveling to Binghamton and Scranton, Pa. on Friday.