Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from The 74, author Carolyn Phenicie discusses recent comments by Sen. Patty Murray suggesting that free college may not be a realistic goal right now.

• If free college is not realistic for the government to provide right now, what can the nonprofit sector do to increase affordablity?

• To learn why free college needs to be more inclusive of student needs, click here.

College affordability is a top priority for reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, but the free-college proposals put forward by some Democrats, including those running for president in 2020, might be a step too far, Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate education committee, said Thursday.

The proposals are “certainly worthy of consideration,” but “we may not be able to achieve these bold goals in a bipartisan reauthorization this year,” she said at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

“We still have a significant opportunity to take a big step in the right direction, and to make a significant down payment toward providing real opportunities for future students,” she added.

“The opportunity to reauthorize our nation’s landmark higher education law doesn’t come around very often, so in order to make a lasting impact on the next generation of students, it’s important we get this right,” Murray said.

Murray’s remarks came a few weeks after her Republican counterpart, Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander, laid out his own priorities at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. He proposed a new accountability system for colleges, simplification of the federal financial aid questionnaire, and an automatic loan repayment system.

Read the full article about the Higher Education Act by Carolyn Phenicie at The 74