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WASHINGTON — Of all the promises Barack Obama made during his campaign, none received more cheers and applause than his vow to make college more affordable and accessible with respect to America’s not old people.

This was obviously appealing to youths themselves, many of whom now find themselves, such as Barack and Michelle Obama did, burdened with debt when they finish their educations. But equally, it was attractive to parents and grandparents who worry about how the next generations in their families can afford the education that is necessary to their events to come well-being.

A report last week from a commission headed through Jim Hunt, the former governor of North Carolina, underlines how important Obama’s pledge is — and how hard to manage it may be to attain his goals.

Its bottom line: College has become increasingly unaffordable to millions of middle-class and working-class Americans, and the rising barriers to campuses are costing the United States in the international competition for a fitted work coerce.

Here are a couple of the key findings from “Measuring Up 2008: The National Report Card on Higher Education,” published by The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education:

Between 1982 and 2007, college schooling and fees rose three seasons in the manner that fast as median family income, after adjusting for inflation. In the past decade, there has been a 50 percent increase in the number of undergraduate borrowers and a doubling in the inflation-adjusted complete of students’ debts.

The affordability barrier to college is eroding America’s standing in the world. Among Americans over 35 and under 64, the United States is second merely to Canada in the percentage holding at minutest two-year degrees. But among those between 25 and 34, we lag not only behind Canada, but Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Ireland, Belgium, Norway, France and Denmark. When it comes to community completion rates, we are 15th of 29 rated nations, barely above Mexico and Turkey.

In each interview, Hunt warned that the trend threatens the U.S. household future. It results in part from the stagnation of wages and family incomes in the past decade, and also from the severe inflation of college costs — worse plane than the run-up in medical care.

With Obama and a Democratic Congress, it is likely that help for students and their families will be on the way — to the extent that governmental estimate limitations and the need for big housekeeping goad packages allow.

But Hunt’s message to those now sitting in the governors’ chairs, of the same kind with he did for with equal reason long, is that higher ed must become their precedence as well.

“We’ve gone through three stages,” he told me. “First, states focused on K-12 and developed a standards-based approach to improving the performance of elementary and secondary schools. Then we turned to early-childhood education and worked on universal kindergarten and pre-K programs. The nearest point of convergence has to be on the colleges.”

With state budgets already under duress because of slumping revenues and resurrection Medicaid costs, Hunt said he realizes that it disposition be difficult this year to protect higher education’s funding, let alone increase spending.

But he said the report makes a powerful matter that the worst deed to do is to continue to raise tuition and fees, putting college beyond the reach of greater amount of and more families.

“We have to look at productivity measures adhering the side of college faculties,” he reported. “The course drag weight may have to increase on this account that some professors.”

That will not be comprehensible end some of my friends at the University of Maryland and the University of Virginia. But when autoworkers are giving up — at minutest temporarily — some of their unemployment and health-care benefits, academics may consider to sacrifice as well.

As Obama clearly recognizes, the education of the next collection of those of nearly the same age is not something that can be squandered, if this state is to have a decent future.

David S. Broder’session round pillar appears Sunday in succession editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is davidbroder@washpost.com