Yesterday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that addresses several higher education issues, including importantly overhauling our student loan system.

Shhh!  Don’t tell anybody involved in the health care reform debate, but the House chose the public option – cutting out the private insurance company lender middle man in favor of providing health care coverage student loans directly to America’s citizens students – and saving an estimated $80 billion over ten years.

In commenting on the legislation, New York Times columnist Gail Collins said something very important about higher education finance yesterday:

The central problem with financing higher education is that tuition keeps running ahead of the rate of inflation like Secretariat closing in the Belmont. The assumption that kids can just pay the bill with borrowed money has to be one of the reasons schools aren’t feeling more pressure to control costs.

I have been threatening to expose the higher education finance emperor’s lack of clothing besides a big fat purse for a while.  It’s coming – just like additional government regulation of higher education finance unless it changes its ways.