The author is an idiot. "Might be a good idea, might be a bad one, no idea nor discussion as to why he's doing this."

A real problem dragging on 20-somethings right now is crippling student loan debt. This does nothing about it... however, moving forward, it keeps the teen-somethings from suffering the same fate. As those kids have parents that are pretty much the biggest political donors and voters right now, it's a great sop to the 40-somethings who are currently going "holy shit how can I possibly pay for my kid's college?"

A real problem facing colleges is they're forced to compete against day spas for students. The biggest investment in college for the past fifteen years has been fancy-schmancy dorms, fitness centers, concierge services and other shit that isn't even tertiary to education. It's a tragedy of the commons: you can't ignore that shit and bolster your academics because at the end of the day, you're competing for where kids are going to live, not just go to school. Know how you nip that shit in the bud? You come in as the federal government and say "we're going to pay 75% towards tuition and exactly fuckall towards room'n'board. Suck it, bitchez." Considering every major institution has branch campuses that offer most or all of the same core curricula without any of the bullshit student life, it solves the tragedy of the commons by imposing external regulation.

Finally, the for-profit market segment in college education is off the fucking hook. You should watch this if you haven't. Put it this way: damn near anybody can qualify for tens of thousands of dollars of student loans that they can only discharge through full repayment or death in order to face a 90% dropout rate in degree programs that offer few jobs from institutions with essentially no accreditation. Know who doesn't get any state money? For-profit colleges. Know who is royally FUCKED by this initiative?

The Street knows.

This initiative, should it pass as originally intended by the Obama administration, will not "fix" higher education. It will, however, go a fair distance towards remedying the most egregious problems. Community colleges have really gained a lot in utility over the past 20 years. What this program basically says is "if you're a real college we'll give you real money for training real students towards a real degree." If it works, it's going to vaporize the likes of Corinthian and University of Phoenix and DeVry like dross in a foundry.