First Lady Michelle Obama is advocating for a new goal: getting more kids to pursue higher education.
During remarks Tuesday at the Bell Multicultural High School in Washington, D.C.. Mrs. Obama decried America’s decline in worldwide college graduation rates and told students that she had to overcome “negativity” to achieve her own educational goals.
"I want you to know that my story can be your story,” said Obama – a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School.
"Get this - some of my teachers straight up told me that I was setting my sights too high,” she added, addressing students from a variety of economic backgrounds in the nation’s capital. “They told me I was never going to get into a school like Princeton. And I still hear that doubt ringing in my head."
But that propelled her, she continued: "I used that negativity to fuel me. To keep me going. And at the end, I got into Princeton."
This foray takes on weightier policy than her first-term projects like child obesity, and it dovetails with President Obama's "North Star" goal of propelling the United States to #1 worldwide in college graduates by 2020.
"This country has slipped all the way to twelfth,” in the world, she said. “We've slipped. And that's unacceptable.”