Boiled down, what the bill does is grant tuition-setting authority to the universities for the next four years. In order to give some hope to middle class kids who want to go to college, the bill also requires that 50% of all revenue from tuition increases above 7% go to middle class financial aid.The last time we spoke of Representative Reuven Carlyle here at the blog, we were calling one of his ideas the dumbest thing we’d heard in a long time. So we’re filled with a mixture of relief, humility, and giddy excitement as we report that he made a big comeback this week.

On Tuesday Representative Carlyle and House Higher Education Chair Larry Seaquist introduced the Higher Education Opportunity Act. This bill tackles the questions of university funding, tuition, and financial aid head on and is a welcome gust of reality in the wake of the fantasy football we’ve seen from the Governor’s Higher Education Funding Task Force.

Whether or not this idea works of course depends on what happens to state appropriations to our public universities. If we keep heading willy-nilly toward making our public universities private, Representative Carlyle’s model won’t work. Private schools don’t devote half of their tuition revenue to financial aid. And public universities can’t stay public without public investment. As we focus on financial aid, we should remember that we want students to have actual universities with actual classes and degree programs where they can spend that financial aid.

So much conversation must ensue in the wake of the introduction of the Higher Education Opportunity Act. And that is perhaps the best thing about what Representative Carlyle has done. Unlike the Gov’s task force, which operated as an echo chamber discussion among business elites, Representative Carlyle has invited all comers to sit down and work on the nuts and bolts of his proposal. Even before introducing the bill, he reached out to students, faculty, and university administrators to begin the discussion. He even got a couple of Republicans to co-sponsor the bill.

Hope is something we try not to indulge too much in here at the blog, but the Higher Education Opportunity Act has us a little optimistic if for no other reason than it doesn’t trade in the fantasies about degree production, magical “efficiencies,” and online manna from heaven that dominates so much of the Olympia conversation about our universities. In their press conference yesterday, Representatives Carlyle and Seaquist encouraged the universities to do some hard number-crunching to determine whether or not the proposal will work. That kind of discussion at least has the possibility of leading to some clear answers about whether or not our universities will continue to be recognizable after this legislative session.

The broad and inclusive conversation that Representatives Carlyle and Seaquist have begun is a glimmer of hope for our state universities and we look forward to participating in it.