WASHINGTON, D.C. – The White House was purposefully vague on the college affordability plan that it announced last week because the administration wants the higher education community to help shape the plan, a White House official told a group of higher education leaders meeting in Washington on Tuesday. 

“The reason it’s not more detailed is because the more we thought about it, it would be better to outline what the principles are, then engage in a dialogue with the entire higher education community, experts, students and families, and then talk about what would be the right way to relay these principles,” said Zakiya Smith, senior advisor for education at the White House Domestic Policy Council, at the annual meeting of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.

"We don’t have all the details and we didn’t come out with a bill that has very specific details laid down from beginning to end,” Smith said. “We thought the best thing to do would be to lay out a blueprint, principles, and get feedback on how to make (those principles) into something more concrete.”

Smith’s remarks came just one week after President Obama announced in his State of the Union address a plan to tie some federal aid to colleges’ and universities’ ability to keep down tuition.

At Tuesday’s talk, Smith offered a few more details on the priorities of the Obama administration’s proposal to make college more affordable.

Besides tying some federal aid to lower tuition rates, those priorities include:

-- Providing Good Value. Smith said the plan’s proposed $55 million First in the World Competition is essentially a revamping of the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education, more commonly known as FIPSE. The aim of the competition is to try new strategies to increase higher education attainment and student outcomes. Smith cited universities that have looked at course redesigns that led to higher completion rates as an example of the kind of innovation that could compete in the First in the World Competition. Smith said less about the proposed $1 billion “Race to the Top” fund for higher education, which would award grants to states that keep tuition low, similar to how the Race to the Top fund at the K-12 level awarded competitive grants to states that implemented K-12 reforms. “It’s always important to leverage state investments in higher education systems” and to curb the rising cost of tuition, Smith said.