Conn Carroll of the Washington Examiner has written an informative new piece in which he suggests that it is the free market, not government, which can ease the rising price of a college education.

Market innovation, not government regulations, are the key to keeping college costs down

“Over the last month,” President Obama said in Buffalo, N.Y., on Thursday, “I’ve been out there talking about what we need to do as a country to make sure that we’ve to a better bargain for the middle class and everybody who’s working hard to get into the middle class.”

“A higher education is the single best investment in you future,” Obama continued. Keion Stella agrees.

Stella, the second youngest of five brothers, was raised in a single parent home in Roanoke, Alabama. He was the only one of his siblings to finish high school, although he has since encouraged all of his siblings to go back and get their G.E.D.s.

Now living in Warren, Ohio, with a son of his own, Stella wanted to improve his own life and his son’s opportunities. But as a single parent with a full-time job, his options were limited.

But then along came Ivy Bridge of Tiffin University, an online community college partnered with the traditional four-year institution Tiffin University and designed to help traditionally underserved students like Stella access higher education.

A new model for higher education, Ivy Bridge made Stella’s academic success more likely by providing both intensive one-on-one support and seamless transfer to over 150 traditional four-year institutions, including Arizona State, George Mason University, and the affiliated Tiffin University.

Stella completed his associate’s degree this May and is scheduled to begin Tiffin this January. He was so satisfied with the program that he convinced his ex-wife, one of his brothers, and two of his colleagues to sign up.

But none of them will be getting the same support and access to automatic transfers that Stella did. That is because the government-empowered bureaucrats who control Tiffin’s accreditation, the Higher Learning Commission, gave Tiffin a choice: either shut down Ivy Bridge entirely, or your own accreditation will be at risk. Tiffin chose to shut down Ivy Bridge.