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The White House is weighing a measure that would require colleges and universities to take a financial stake in their students’ ability to repay government loans, an effort that could squeeze loan availability to students and reduce defaults, the Wall Street Journal reported. For several months, Trump administration officials have been discussing enacting such a mechanism or making a push for one in Congress as part of a broader effort to combat rising college costs. In the administration’s budget proposal released on Monday, officials made brief mention of a “request to create an educational finance system that requires postsecondary institutions that accept taxpayer funds to have skin in the game through a student loan risk-sharing program.” Such a proposal could be included in a coming executive order addressing higher education, several officials said. A draft of the order isn’t final and the specifics of exactly how a skin-in-the-game provision would work haven’t been laid out. It also isn’t clear whether the White House will back an administration proposal or urge Congress to take one up. The order the White House is preparing, expected in coming weeks and led by the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump, will likely touch on several hot-button issues in higher education, including a possible provision tying federal research dollars to rules about free speech on campuses, these people said. Leaders on the Senate and House education committees are also currently negotiating a possible reauthorization of the Higher Education Act this year, the sweeping 1965 law that governs higher education and student loans. Should a risk-sharing proposal come up in Congress, it would likely be included in a larger reauthorization package.

The price to keep Pennsylvania’s nuclear plants operating for at least a half-dozen more years is expected to be $500 million annually, according to the sponsor of a rescue bill introduced in the state House yesterday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. House Bill 11, sponsored by Rep. Tom Mehaffie, R-Dauphin, is designed to create a new revenue source for nuclear power plants by rewarding energy generators that do not emit carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas. Nuclear plants are struggling in regional electricity markets to compete against new, efficient plants that burn low-cost natural gas, although some are more vulnerable than others. Two of Pennsylvania’s five nuclear plants have announced plans to close years before their operating licenses expire: Three Mile Island near Harrisburg later this year and Beaver Valley in Shippingport in 2021. Mehaffie said that the proposal would increase a typical monthly residential electric bill by $1.77. If all of the state’s nuclear plants closed, he said, a typical residential electric bill would be expected to increase by $2.39 per month.