His message to colleges and universities: "You can't assume that you'll just jack up tuition every single year. If you can't stop tuition from going up, then the funding you get from taxpayers each year will go down."

"The president wants to mimic the 'Race to the Top' program used to reform K-12 education, by creating Race to the Top grants for colleges and universities that come up with ways to keep tuition in check. Higher ed officials say this smells like another example of federal overreach into higher ed, a system which, as the president acknowledged in his speech at the University of Michigan today, is viewed by many as the world's finest.