Paul Ryan is still living up to his reputation as an idea man.

Andrew Kelly of Forbes reports.

Paul Ryan And The Emerging Conservative Reform Agenda In Higher Education

Paul Ryan’s 73-page blueprint for expanding opportunity is chock full of ideas for higher education and job training reform. And rightfully so: opportunities for high school grads have shriveled up, and the cost of postsecondary education is crushing American families. The standard federal solution—upping student aid to temporarily bring prices down—is failing.

It’s time for new ideas, and Ryan’s blueprint provides a few. Most of the topics are familiar; they reflect a broader shift in thinking on higher education policy among a handful of reform-minded conservatives. This nascent agenda (if you can even call it that yet) moves beyond the confused Romney platform, which oscillated between “me-tooism” with Democrats and promises to bring us back to the cronyism of federally-guaranteed private lending. It also pushes past knee-jerk, indiscriminate cuts to student aid. Ryan’s last budget, for one, was criticized for cutting Pell Grants.

Now, a subset of Republicans is speaking a different language: federal reforms should create more options, simplify access to those options, and change the incentives for borrowers and colleges. To be sure, some of these ideas have bipartisan support. But Republicans are now leading on many of them.