Professor Vance Fried of Oklahoma State University is convinced that it doesn’t have to cost much more than $7,000 per year, and has crunched the numbers to show it. He writes about his idea today on Inside Higher Ed.

I don’t doubt that it would be possible to run a lean, efficient college operation just as Fried suggests. A huge obstacle, however, would be accreditation. Existing institutions would feel threatened by the emergence of low-cost colleges, and since they run the accreditation associations, they would probably find all kinds of reasons why Fried-type schools wouldn’t pass muster. But if the cost differential were large enough, they might be able to exist even without the ability to accept federal student aid.