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Marco Rubio promises to bust the ‘cartel’ of bloated higher education as president

Today’s colleges and universities are like early-America textile artisans who tried to fight the “power loom,” Republican presidential hopeful Marco Rubio said in a major policy speech in Chicago on his “21st century jobs plan,” Inside Higher Ed reports.

The basic problem with higher ed is that schools are promoting a “skills gap” by shoveling students into expensive and irrelevant programs, which are especially damaging to lower-income students and their families, Rubio said in his prepared remarks:

The problems with higher education are many, but the ideas from Hillary Clinton and other outdated leaders are narrow and shortsighted. We do not need timid tweaks to the old system; we need a holistic overhaul – we need to change how we provide degrees, how those degrees are accessed, how much that access costs, how those costs are paid, and even how those payments are determined.

As president, I will begin with a powerful but simple reform. Our higher education system is controlled by what amounts to a cartel of existing colleges and universities, which use their power over the accreditation process to block innovative, low-cost competitors from entering the market.

Within my first 100 days, I will bust this cartel by establishing a new accreditation process that welcomes low-cost, innovative providers. This would expose higher education to the market forces of choice and competition, which would prompt a revolution driven by the needs of students – just as the needs of consumers drive the progress of every other industry in our economy.

Read the speech.

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