Republican efforts to pass tax legislation have commanded center stage in Washington in recent weeks. Not without good reason.

If passed, the GOP plan will be the first major rewrite of the U.S. code in more than 30 years. It has been widely assumed on the flip side that failure by the GOP to deliver on this priority spells doom for the party in next year’s congressional elections.

This wrangling has obscured most other legislation moving through Congress. But there are other significant measures grinding through the mill.

One that caught our eye is a 542-page revamp of the Higher Education Act. The bill was introduced by Rep. Virginia Fox of North Carolina. Her action cues it up for what the Wall Street Journal says could be a year-long debate.

The bill updates the Higher Education Act of 1965. It proposes some bold changes, as evidenced by the immediate outcry from some colleges and self-described student advocates.

Major revisions include an overhaul of student loan programs; tracking of wages earned by graduates of specific colleges in specific disciplines and public reporting of that data; and scrapping most of the current regulatory regimen relating to for-profit colleges.

The outcomes-based aspect of the proposal is not that original. Kentucky just this year joined more than 30 states that have tied state funding to public universities at least partially to financial success of graduates in the workplace.

But the federal government has been the obstacle and not the solution in terms of making these programs manageable. A decade ago, at the behest of lobbyists for private nonprofit colleges, Congress passed a law forbidding the Department of Labor from gathering data that would show wage performance of graduates in specific disciplines at specific universities.

Fox’s bill would directly countermand that. It would require publication of graduates’ salaries five and 10 years after they leave college. The data would be broken down to the academic program level, not just the college level.

We have editorialized in favor of this in the past. Given the cost of college these days, why shouldn’t top students know how graduates of Purdue’s engineering programs fare relative to those at Georgia Tech, UK and UofL? And longer term, wouldn’t such comparisons force those schools to focus more on what training is most valued in the workplace? How is that a bad thing for students?

Speaking of college costs, the bill also reins in student loans and grants. It raises future loan interest charges in stair-step fashion, eliminates some grant programs and limits borrowing for a popular graduate-student loan program to $28,500 – far less than what it costs to earn some graduate degrees.

Some of this is enlightened self interest on the part of the government. Student loan debt already exceeds the debt Americans carry on credit cards and auto loans. And 20 percent of those loans, most backed by the government, are in default.

Making federal grant and loan programs less generous also serves to tamp down the explosion of tuition costs that previous loose lending has fueled. Tuition is up 400 percent since 1990 – four times the rate of inflation. A forced stint in debt rehab would serve colleges well. This aspect of the bill is sure to be demagogued. But given the way things go in Washington these days, that’s all-the-more evidence that the change makes sense.