HIGHER EDUCATION UPDATE: Universities Not Happy With Obama’s Tuition Criticism. “Even the suggestion of using federal financial aid to force colleges to lower prices drew criticism from many higher education experts Wednesday. . . . In his words, several experts in the economics of higher education heard an echo of a short-lived proposal from 2003: Rep. Howard (Buck) McKeon, a California Republican who was then chairman of the Committee on Education and the Workforce’s 21st-Century Competitiveness Subcommittee, proposed penalizing colleges that increased their cost of attendance by more than twice the rate of inflation for two consecutive years, including cutting off federal aid.”