Obama criticizes colleges for driving up costs with gourmet food

INDIANAPOLIS — President Barack Obama criticized university administrators Friday, saying they’d driven up the cost of college with high-priced extras such as gourmet food and lush fitness centers.

He also teed off on state legislators who’ve cut funding for state schools, saying they were driving up costs past any link to value and leaving graduating students loaded with debt.

“Now, the school administrators, they have a responsibility to be more efficient. And students and parents, we have a responsibility to be smart consumers,” he said during a trip to Indiana to tout his proposals to help the middle class.

He recalled that when he’d started at Occidental College, he exercised in a basic gym and ate in a cafeteria where students called the entrée “roast beast” because they didn’t know what kind of meat it was.

Today, he lamented, he’s learned firsthand about the powerful lure of perks at some campuses, as his own daughters near college age:

“Malia is now at the age where she’s starting to look at colleges. And I said, you know, these days I hear everybody’s looking for fancy gyms and gourmet food.”

He made the remarks about four-year universities at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis, pitching his proposals to help the middle class, including a $60 billion plan to aid community college students.