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 Speaking this morning before the University at Buffalo, President Obama rolled out a thoughtful plan to tame the rising cost of college that, should it ever reach Congress, will likely end up deader than the dead white men on a freshman English syllabus. And that's a pity. For decades now, Washington has tried to improve access to higher education by acting as a fount of no-strings-attached cash for college students, freely handing out cheap loans and grants to help them cover the rising price of a degree. The results have been, well, less than stellar. Tuition has kept marching up. Americans are now shouldering more than $1 trillion in student debt. Millions have defaulted on their education loans. And the free-flow of government money has helped give birth to an essentially predatory for-profit college industry, along with some less than savory nonprofit institutions. Today, the president said: No more. True to form, the White House's plan is sort of a grab-bag of wonky policy initiatives. But the heart of it is a simple, powerful, and long overdue idea that the Obama first began arguing for last summer: that Washington should fund the colleges that get the best results while keeping tuition reasonable. By 2015, the Department of Education would begin grading institutions based on factors like average price, student debt loads, graduation rates, employment, and the number of low-income students enrolled. Then, starting in 2018, the government would start directing federal aid to schools with the highest grades compared to their peer institutions. As colleges try to shape up to meet Washington's standards and attract students, tuition prices should theoretically drop, or at least level off. 
 
 The White House calls this "pay for performance." And, to be sure, some of the details are still vague. It's unclear whether troubled colleges would actually lose aid as a punishment for a bad score, or if high-performing schools would simply be rewarded with more funds. The White House summary states only that that students "attending high-performing colleges could receive larger Pell Grants," which generally go to low-income and working class students, "and more affordable student loans." But on a broad philosophical level, the proposal would fundamentally rewire the relationship between the federal government and the world of higher education, by introducing at least somewhat meaningful accountability measures for the first time across all sectors of the industry, from the Ivy League, to the University of Phoenix. The key to the whole plan, though, really lies in government's power to dole out aid dollars based on results. Without that, you just have a government-sponsored college guide that the least sophisticated, most at-risk students probably won't bother to use. And sadly, accountability is the one thing the White House needs Congress for. The Department of Education is free to start grading colleges as it sees fit. But it can't use its rankings to decide aid eligibility without legislation. And so far, the signals from Capitol Hill aren't good. As The New York Times writes: Representative John Kline, Republican of Minnesota and the chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement that he was skeptical of Mr. Obama's proposed rating system. "I remain concerned that imposing an arbitrary college ranking system could curtail the very innovation we hope to encourage -- and even lead to federal price controls," Mr. Kline said. "As always, the devil is in the details." Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, said: "I'm strongly opposed to his plan to impose new federal standards on higher education institutions. This is a slippery slope, and one that ends with the private sector inevitably giving up more of its freedom to innovate and take risks. The U.S. did not create the best higher education system in the world by using standards set by Washington bureaucrats." Recent history also doesn't offer a great deal of hope. Liberals have traditionally treated the higher education establishment with kid gloves. But Republicans, as well as a few Democrats, have recently fashioned themselves as defenders of the for-profit college industry, in particular. In 2011, 58 Democrats joined with all but four House Republicans to pass an amendment that would have prevented the Department of Education from using federal funding to enforce its "gainful employment rule," which cuts off federal aid to for-profit colleges whose students can't repay their education debts. Maybe the GOP's visceral animosity towards the ivory tower will convince them to abandon their for-profit friends. But given that the for-profits would almost certainly be one of the biggest losers under Obama's plan -- we're talking about schools that educate about 11 percent of students, but generate almost half of all student loan defaults -- it seems unlikely. ||||| For the last year, most of our conversation about higher education has focused on a side issue: How education should be financed. 
 
 By tinkering with the interest rate on student loans, we can reallocate the cost burden of college between taxpayers and students. What this doesn't do is address the underlying problem that drives affordability: College keeps rising in cost without rising in quality. 
 
 Today and tomorrow, President Obama is making proposals that aim to address the underlying problem of cost, because boosting taxpayer subsidies for college isn't an affordability strategy that will work forever. 
 
 The proposals are still in the early stage. The key idea is to identify colleges that are cost effective: Ones that have good graduation and job outcomes for students, that hold tuition down, and that serve more difficult-to-reach students, particularly those from low-income families. 
 
 Simply publicizing this information may help students make smarter decisions about what degrees to get and where. But more importantly, the president wants to tie federal financial aid to performance on these metrics, so colleges have better incentives to provide a better product. 
 
 We'll need to see how the rating systems work when the Department of Education releases them next year. But this is the right direction to be moving in. As with health care, third-party payment causes the education sector to focus too little on cost, and the government needs to make sure that tax dollars are spent efficiently. If we want to make college affordable, the government needs to bend the cost curve, not just write bigger checks. 
 
 Jonathan Chait worries that Republicans may obstruct this proposal just because they feel like it. I'm more optimistic. I view scorched-earth Republican opposition to health care reform as having been driven mainly by neither ideology nor animus toward the president. I think the key was a desire to protect Republican constituencies who benefit from the health policy status quo: doctors and Medicare recipients. 
 
 In the case of higher education, the constituency getting its ox gored by cost control will be college professors and administrators, hardly a fixture of Republican fundraisers or Tea Party town halls. That bodes well for bipartisan compromise on this issue.
– President Obama's plan to ease the student debt problem is "simple, powerful, and long overdue," writes Jordan Weissmann at the Atlantic. It's also probably doomed. As he spelled out yesterday, Obama wants to help students figure out which schools give them the best value, factoring in things like tuition and employment after graduation. Schools with higher rankings would see more federal aid, which would theoretically spur reform and thus lower costs. "On a broad philosophical level, the proposal would fundamentally rewire the relationship between the federal government and the world of higher education, by introducing at least somewhat meaningful accountability measures for the first time across all sectors of the industry, from the Ivy League, to the University of Phoenix," writes Weissmann. The catch? The Department of Education can come up with any ranking it wants, but tying the results to federal aid needs the approval of Congress, and Republicans already seem skeptical. Marco Rubio, for instance, called such a plan a "slippery slope" that would give "Washington bureaucrats" too much sway over the private sector. The plan is an "important first step," writes Weissmann, "but it's not clear when, or if, it will lead anywhere." At Business Insider, Josh Barro is more enthusiastic. "In the case of higher education, the constituency getting its ox gored by cost control will be college professors and administrators, hardly a fixture of Republican fundraisers or Tea Party town halls," he writes. "That bodes well for bipartisan compromise on this issue." Click for Barro's full column, or Weissmann's full column.