"At a time when going to college has never been more important, it's never been more expensive, and our nation's families haven't been in this kind of financial duress since the great depression. And so what we have is just sort of a miraculous opportunity simply by stopping the subsidy to banks when we already have the risk of loans. We can plow those savings into our students. And we can make college dramatically more affordable, tens of billions of dollars over the next decade"
About this Quote
The key move is the phrase “miraculous opportunity,” a deliberately populist bit of language for a policy fix that, on paper, is simply rerouting federal student lending away from bank middlemen. “We already have the risk” is the knife twist. If taxpayers are on the hook either way, why are banks getting paid? Duncan is inviting the listener to see the subsidy as a hidden toll booth on the road to higher education - one that benefits institutions, not students.
Context matters: this argument lands in the post-2008 landscape, when anger at bailouts and financial intermediaries was white-hot, and “Great Depression” comparisons still carried urgency. It’s also a preemptive answer to skeptics: he’s not promising new spending; he’s promising reallocated waste. The subtext is political jujitsu - framing reform as thrift, equity, and common sense all at once, with “tens of billions” as the hard-number clincher to make the morality feel inevitable.
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Duncan, Arne. (2026, January 17). At a time when going to college has never been more important, it's never been more expensive, and our nation's families haven't been in this kind of financial duress since the great depression. And so what we have is just sort of a miraculous opportunity simply by stopping the subsidy to banks when we already have the risk of loans. We can plow those savings into our students. And we can make college dramatically more affordable, tens of billions of dollars over the next decade. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/at-a-time-when-going-to-college-has-never-been-42550/
Chicago Style
Duncan, Arne. "At a time when going to college has never been more important, it's never been more expensive, and our nation's families haven't been in this kind of financial duress since the great depression. And so what we have is just sort of a miraculous opportunity simply by stopping the subsidy to banks when we already have the risk of loans. We can plow those savings into our students. And we can make college dramatically more affordable, tens of billions of dollars over the next decade." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/at-a-time-when-going-to-college-has-never-been-42550/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"At a time when going to college has never been more important, it's never been more expensive, and our nation's families haven't been in this kind of financial duress since the great depression. And so what we have is just sort of a miraculous opportunity simply by stopping the subsidy to banks when we already have the risk of loans. We can plow those savings into our students. And we can make college dramatically more affordable, tens of billions of dollars over the next decade." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/at-a-time-when-going-to-college-has-never-been-42550/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
