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Maybe if the Postsecondary Education Review Commission had a member like Treasurer John Kennedy, the chief bomb thrower on the Streamlining Commission, people would pay more attention to it.

With Kennedy regularly agitating the Jindal administration for more aggressive cost-cutting, the Streamlining Commission is making the bigger headlines. Yet the less-noticed advisory board on higher education stands to make the bigger waves, ones that can bring long-overdue changes to the state's college system.

On just about everybody's list of what is most screwed up with state government is that it runs too many four-year colleges, 14 in all. Shutting down a few might sound fine, but since only three public universities in the United States have closed since 1945, the probability of that happening here is about as remote as state lawmakers voting themselves a pay cut.

Instead, the advisory board, mostly comprised of higher education experts from outside the state, has come up with a common-sensical way of right-sizing the colleges and increasing the woeful graduation rate. Simply, make the schools harder to get into.

Louisiana's problem is not too many colleges or too many graduates for jobs available. Rather, it has too many entering freshmen who will drop out or flunk out with nothing to show for their college experience except a burdensome student loan debt.

Right now, it is laughably easy to get into some universities, with their low test-score requirements, with exceptions for those who can't meet them, such as graduating in the top half of one's high school class. The colleges are pressured to take anyone with a high school diploma and a pulse because their funding from the state is based on enrollment, instead of performance standards such as retention and graduation rates.

So the college board, with the tacit approval of the Jindal administration, has recommended that all the schools raise their admissions requirements, which should result in lower enrollments in the short run but higher graduation rates in years to follow.

High schoolers will have a choice between working harder to meet stiffer standards or enrolling in two-year community colleges, leading to an associate degree or later admission to a university. Or they can sit home on the couch and mope, but even that is less expensive for the state and themselves (or their parents) than starting college with little chance of finishing.

The advisory board followed up with more clear thinking in recommending that the Board of Regents perform a shake-down review of degree programs that too many schools offer and expensive research programs that exceed the missions of the regional colleges.

The commission has not even started looking at the mishmash of college governing boards, to be considered at the January meeting. Yet, if the state does nothing more than follow the advice it's already been given, it would quickly improve the economic prospects of a generation while saving taxpayers untold millions.

But, once the board issues its final report in February, will its recommendations turn into action or dust on a shelf? That question first lies with the Board of Regents, which can push the college systems to toughen admission requirements and to pare back degree programs and research.

The chairman of the advisory commission, Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, who also chairs the Senate Education Committee, told Regents head Sally Clausen that her board has all the power it needs to make the changes recommended. "I want to proceed at a very fast pace," he ordered.

The underlying threat is that if Regents doesn't act decisively enough, the Legislature can force the issue through its budget-making power.

And why haven't both bodies done so already? Another good question. It could just be that there has never been a disinterested group of outside experts to offer such a clear plan of action, which the public can understand and support and which also provides cover for the Regents, legislators and governor to act. Nor has there been such a prolonged stretch of deep budget deficits that demands drastic, comprehensive action and limits the option to do little or nothing.

This still doesn't mean that what needs to happen will get done. But with little fanfare, this quietly hard-working commission is showing the way that we would be fools not to follow.