Real Clear Policy

(Newswire, June 12, 2018) They don’t call it “Real Clear Policy” for nothin’. Friend, colleague, fellow edreform pioneer (and honorary co-chair of CER’s Silver Anniversary Summit) Gov. Jeb Bush, and Steve Klinsky, Founder and CEO of Modern States Education Alliance, offer a compelling plan that would lower the cost of tuition (by up to 25 percent) and create an immediate “on ramp” to college for students. Called “Freshman Year for Free,” it’s a program that provides more than 30 top quality online college courses to anyone for free and can lead to a full year of real academic credit at more than 2,900 traditional colleges and universities, from Purdue to the University of Wisconsin to Morehouse. It’s great!

The only cost associated with the program is the $85 fee charged for the College Board’s College Level Examination Program (CLEP). And here’s the truly brilliant part of the Bush-Klinsky proposal: that states make the program completely free by picking up the $85 fee. Why? We’ll let them explain: “For $85 per CLEP exam, far less than the cost of tuition for college credits, governors across the country can enable students to take a CLEP test for free and earn college credit. The fee for the exam is small compared to the $1,782 cost of a typical course at a public university and can provide a path to higher education for thousands of students who face the choice between not going to college or taking on massive debt.” Read the whole piece here and then forward it to your state representatives, senators, and your governor.