[sadface]

I'd be interested in seeing how a "single payer" approach to college financing would work.

High level - The government pours many billions of dollars into colleges and universities every year, but because the money is disseminated via millions of individual loans to individual students, any buying power (and downward pressure on prices) that the government could provide is effectively eliminated. For a university this is a best case scenario: sell a "necessary" product to millions of individual customers with infinite money.

If instead, the universities could only "sell" to the government, the government would be able to actually demand meaningful concessions in price.

I'm thinking something like:

1. Students -$-> Gov't -$-> Universities (many more sellers than buyers)

Instead of:

2. Gov't -$-> Students -$-> Universities (many more buyers than sellers)

Easy to see how case 1 would keep prices lower in an ideal world...