New York lawmaker Charlie Rangel gave an interesting take on the college funding situation during an interview on MSNBC on Thursday: Youth shouldn’t have to pay, he said.

Mr. Rangel to host Joy-Ann Reid, who was filling in for Martin Bashir, that “there is no reason why a young person should have to pay for college.”

He made the remarks during a discussion about President Obama’s education proposal, which caps student loan payments to 10 percent of the graduate’s paychecks and pressures schools to reduce costs. The proposal also contains a provision to rate schools on educational value and tying federal funding to the scale.

“I think it’s exciting and certainly it’s going to bring in accountability,” Mr. Rangel said. “You know, we have universities scattered all over the world. Sometimes you think that tuition means nothing to a large group of people who pay these enormous salaries to college presidents. But if you’re talking about production, if you’re talking about what is the college really giving someone that doesn’t want a worldwide education, they just want to be able to compete, this makes sense.

“There is no reason why a young person should have to pay for college education, because who does it benefit except a nation?” he said. “Who are we competing against? Not ourselves, but China and other industrialized countries.”

Mr. Rangel also said those who are forced to pay exorbitant college costs to obtain medical degrees face an unfair debt burden when they graduate.

“When a person gets out of health school, I mean out of medical school, they can’t get the money to pay off their debt,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Mr. Rangel didn’t specify in the interview the source of funding that could be tapped to pay for young people to attend college.

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