When considering social welfare in the United States, you can clearly see that there is a wide range of different policies. According to Howard Jacob Karger and David Stoesz, the benefits provided are intended to meet individuals' essential life needs (such as active work, income, relationships, healthcare, sustenance and housing), (which) are regulated by social welfare policy ( 2010, page 3). For the purposes of this article, we will analyze a specific social welfare policy known as President Obama's Race to the Top initiative. In broad terms, this policy was based on four key areas of education reform, which will be discussed later. Although the main theme is focused on education, this policy clearly has many different focuses. For this reason we will focus mainly on higher education. This includes the following goals: helping middle-class families afford college, keeping college costs low, building strength within community colleges, and increasing public participation in government (The White House, n.d.). Maximum attention will be paid to individual initiatives aimed at making university more accessible and containing university costs. Policies can be very helpful when it comes to providing assistance to others. The social work profession is dedicated to enabling all types of individuals, groups and communities to function, contribute and progress in society (The West Scotland Consortium, 2000). In particular, Obama's Race to the Top initiative helps social workers assist students in achieving their higher education goals. This includes making the act of attending college a more achievable dream for those interested in doing so; with this policy's focus on high quality... middle of paper... the United States. With the funding of this policy, a desire was born to prevent student loan interest rates for college students from rising further. This goal benefits college students who are working toward, or who hope to work toward, an affordable degree. However, feedback from teachers across the country suggests that the goals of the policy itself are not actually resulting in higher test scores and are instead causing more problems within schools. Considering all this, one might determine that the total effectiveness of Obama's Race to the Top reform is limited in its success in improving the US education system. Nonetheless, future policies should continue to be implemented in an active attempt to make necessary adjustments to problems centered on the U.S. education system..