A Radically Simple Plan to Fix Higher Education

A new essay proposed creating a voluntary federal funding program that would provide participating public and nonprofit colleges with approximately $10,000 per enrolled student in exchange for meeting affordability and other requirements. Participating institutions would adopt a standardized income-based tuition structure, use standardized financial-aid offers, accept all transfer credits from other participating institutions, and make institutional data and classrooms available for federally supported education research. It argues that the approach could simultaneously stabilize institutions facing demographic and financial pressure, reduce student costs and credit loss, and create a nationwide network through which students could more easily move among participating colleges.