(CNN) Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is proposing to guarantee two free years of community college or other training as part of a higher education plan that his campaign says would cost $750 billion per year.

The former vice president's plan, unveiled Tuesday morning, also aims to cut student loan obligations -- particularly for those with public service jobs.

The plan formalizes measures that Biden has frequently discussed on the campaign trail. It builds on the existing higher education framework, rather than including further-reaching proposals such as four years of free college and wiping away all student debt.

It stops short of the four years of free college tuition proposed by Biden's two leading rivals for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont

It's also a step away from what Biden called for in 2015, as he announced he would not run for president in 2016. He said then that "we need to commit to 16 years of free public education for all our children" and the nation should "make the same commitment to a college education today that we made to a high school education 100 years ago." Instead, it builds on the two-year proposal that Biden and former President Barack Obama had advocated for while in office.

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