¡°This is a major initiative that will revolutionise higher education in this country and improve the lives of so many of our people.¡± So said Bernie Sanders of Hillary Clinton¡¯s plan for ¡°debt-free¡± public higher education, in the July speech in which he endorsed his former rival for the Democratic presidential nomination.

One of Mr Sanders' attention-grabbing pledges, highly popular with his supporters, had been to abolish tuition fees in public higher education and make it free for all. Ms Clinton¡¯s on college stated that students should not have to borrow to pay for tuition, books or fees, but would have required families to make ¡°an affordable and realistic family contribution¡±.

However, in July she went further and committed to a plan that would mean by 2021 students from families with income up to $125,000 (?95,000) will at in-state four-year public colleges and universities, a pledge covering 80 per cent of US families, according to her campaign.

Supporters of the plan will say that in the world¡¯s most important, and most marketised, higher education system, it could mark an important shift towards seeing higher education as a public good accessible to all.

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Ms Clinton¡¯s revamping of her policy was seen as an attempt to win backing from Mr Sanders and his supporters. But the political move brings important policy questions: whether this is the right remedy on college affordability and whether it has any chance of being implemented by a Clinton White House.

¡°During the primaries and in the debates, the main distinction that Clinton drew between her [original] plan and the Sanders plan was that the Sanders plan would pay for higher education for a lot of people who didn¡¯t need help,¡± said William Doyle, associate professor of public policy and higher education at Vanderbilt University, a lead author on the 2016 ,?which found that affordability had declined in all 50 states since 2008.

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He added that it ¡°does appear that Clinton¡¯s new plan will spend a lot of money on students who would have gone to college without additional help ¨C the same critique she levelled at Sanders¡±.?

Professor Doyle said that private institutions, not included in the plan, are ¡°not necessarily elite or selective institutions¡± and often ¡°play a big role in ensuring college access¡±.

He added: ¡°There¡¯s a real question of whether there¡¯s an adequate supply of public college spots to enrol all of the students who are supposed to go tuition free.¡±?

The Clinton plan would provide federal grants to states to help remove tuition fees. But the plan would rely on state governments buying in and making a contribution.

The plan would be ¡°fully paid for by limiting certain tax expenditures for high-income taxpayers¡±, the Clinton campaign has said.?Her aides have stated an estimated cost of $500 billion over 10 years, according to media reports.

Iris Palmer, a senior education policy analyst at the thinktank New America, said that there was a question over whether the costs of the programme could result in entry requirements at public colleges being toughened to limit numbers, a result that ¡°ends up benefitting wealthy individuals¡±. There should be ¡°low income enrolment targets¡± to counteract this, she suggested.

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If Ms Clinton does win November¡¯s presidential election (she leads Republican nominee Donald Trump in the polls), she would also have to get her college plans through Congress.

The Republicans currently have a majority in both houses, although House of Representatives and Senate elections will also be held in November.

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Ms Palmer suggested that to pass the debt-free college plans through Congress, Ms Clinton would need ¡°a filibuster-proof majority¡± of the kind enjoyed by President Obama in his first term.

¡°Getting something of this magnitude passed¡­would be very, very challenging,¡± she said, adding that to do so Ms Clinton might have to make debt-free college a ¡°political priority¡± in the way President Obama made the Affordable Care Act a priority in his first term.

Ms Palmer also said the plan would be ¡°building on top of the current system we have¡±, contrasting this with the ¡°more radical¡± proposals in New America¡¯s 2016 report, which called for a new federal-state relationship in higher education to replace the ¡°irreparably broken¡± current system.

Professor Doyle said that most policy efforts on college affordability ¡°have focused on ¡®feeding the beast¡¯, trying to provide money to keep up with tuition increases¡±.

¡°The price of higher education is being driven up by two factors: institutions keep getting more expensive to run every year, and states haven¡¯t been able to keep funding the increasing expense of higher education,¡± he continued.

One big question for the Clinton plan, Professor Doyle said, is how it ¡°will keep institutions from continuing to increase costs, and therefore prices, making this an expensive plan over the long term¡±.

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¡°While institutions have been getting more expensive to operate, they don¡¯t have to be as expensive as they are ¨C there have to be more efficient ways of running these institutions.¡± Any big plan on college affordability must ¡°push on institutions to ¡®bend the cost curve¡¯ in order for it to be sustainable over the long term¡±, he added.

john.morgan@tesglobal.com