College costs are going up, but students may soon have some help in making it more affordable.

The U.S. House is expected to vote today on a bill that could greatly increase financial aid for students. The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act would reform the federal student-loan process, increase the Pell Grant, simplify the financial-aid-application process, and then direct the savings achieved to new education programs. The bill would save the federal government an estimated $87 billion over the next 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Reforming how the federal government provides loans to students is at the heart of the bill. The government currently subsidizes banks and private lenders to offer loans to students at low, set interest rates — such loans as the Perkins Loan or the Stafford Loan, through such private lenders as Sallie Mae. Under the bill, the government would directly administer these loans through a direct-loan program, cutting out the middleman.

So how would the bill affect UI students and millions of students across the country?

This bill would lower the interest rates you pay on federal loans and increase the Pell Grant, which is a need-based grant awarded to low-income students. It would expand the Perkins Loan, a program that provides low-interest loans to students. And if you’ve ever struggled with or found the application form confusing, this bill would simplify it.

Simply put, more students would have access to more financial aid backed by the government, which is not vulnerable to the volatility of the market. The act would greatly benefit students reliant on financial aid to afford college and save the government billions of dollars.

But why is it needed and why right now? Most students intuitively understand the urgent need to increase financial assistance to students for college. College costs are going up, and the means to afford tuition and other related college expenses are tightening. Students are graduating with more debt and with arguably fewer economic opportunities than the previous generation.

The financial collapse compelled Congress to act on this issue. It exposed serious vulnerabilities in the public-private partnership in administering student loans. We are all familiar with the narrative by now. The bankruptcy of the giant investment bank Lehman Brothers preceded a collapse of the entire financial sector that eventually spread to the rest of the economy. The stock market plunged, and credit markets froze. Individuals and small businesses soon found themselves unable to obtain credit to buy cars or to make payroll. The government soon stepped in to stabilize the financial system and the economy in one of the largest government interventions since the New Deal.

College loans, even those federally guaranteed, were also affected by this freeze in credit. We’ll learn many lessons from this crisis. One lesson that this bill will address is decoupling the financial assistance so many students depend upon to go to college from the ups and downs of markets and banks. This is one of the most overlooked aspects of the financial collapse — what happened to students when they were unable to access necessary loans to attend college.

While this bill will provide more aid to students, there’s much work left to be done in making colleges more affordable. Tuition is still rising, and it will continue to do so. To bring down the overall costs of college, we’ll have to make them drastically more efficient and less bureaucratic.