Washington — In a speech before the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce this morning, President Obama will fill in some of the blanks in his education budget for the 2010 fiscal year, offering some details on his plans to simplify the application form for federal student aid and to create a new grant program to improve college-retention rates, senior administration officials told reporters on Monday night.

The aides said Mr. Obama would also use the speech to urge students to stay in school, hammering home a message of personal responsibility that began with his address to Congress last month. In that speech, the president set a goal for the nation to have the world’s highest proportion of college graduates by 2020 and admonished students that dropping out is “not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country.”

Today’s speech comes less than two weeks after Mr. Obama released a budget blueprint that calls for student-aid simplification and the creation of a $2.5-billion grant program to help states improve college-completion rates. The plan also calls for ending the guaranteed-loan program and using the savings to increase the maximum Pell Grant and make it an entitlement. —Kelly Field