Marco Rubio, a?candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has called for a ¡°holistic overhaul¡± to higher education, bringing in low-cost providers and breaking the existing ¡°cartel¡± of colleges and universities.

Mr Rubio, a US senator for Florida, made higher education one of the focuses of his first major on domestic policy, delivered in Chicago today.

He also pitched an idea for ¡°investors¡± to pay the tuition fees of students in return for a share of their earnings after graduation.

¡°The lesson of history is clear: to empower today¡¯s workers, we must equip them with today¡¯s skills,¡± he said. ¡°And to do that, we need our higher education system to innovate at the same rate as our economy.¡±

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

Mr Rubio warned that despite employers reporting a lack of skills among graduates, ¡°we still tell students that to get a degree, they have to spend four years on a campus; tens of thousands of dollars on tuition, books, room, board; and hundreds of hours in a classroom, often learning subjects that aren¡¯t relevant to the modern economy¡±.

He added: ¡°We do not need timid tweaks to the old system; we need a holistic overhaul ¨C 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.¡±

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

And he continued: ¡°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 ¨C just as the needs of consumers drive the progress of every other industry in our economy.¡±

Mr Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants who graduated from the University of Florida before studying law at the University of Miami, also said that he would give students the ability to ¡°choose the right degree at the right price from the right institution for them. I¡¯ve proposed an idea called the ¡®Student Right to Know Before You Go Act¡¯, which requires institutions to tell students how much they can expect to earn with a given degree before they take out the loans to pay for it.¡±

He also stated that he would make ¡°student loans more manageable by making income-based repayment automatic for all graduates, so the more they make, the faster they pay back their loans; and the less they make, the less strain their loans cause¡±.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

And Mr Rubio said that he had ¡°proposed an idea called Student Investment Plans, which would let students partner with investors who would pay their tuition in return for a percentage of their earnings for a few years after graduation. It may result in a profit for the investor or it may not ¨C but unlike with loans, none of the risk lies with the student.¡±

john.morgan@tesglobal.com