I think there’s a good chance. There are a lot of Democrats up for reelection next year who aren’t going to be willing to fight it. The question is whether or not the president will be willing to risk a veto. Especially if it may get overridden.
Hasn’t Virgin Galactic been offering this for years? If they’d dropped the price, it would be news, but I don’t know why people have been bothering to link to this story.
Articles like this don’t seem to take into account what the PhD is in. I think we could use more engineers and fewer “studies” majors, who probably comprise most of the PhDs serving coffee or dressing hair (not that we’re suffering a shortage of lawyers, either). But it’s all part of the (finally) popping higher-education bubble. I suspect that it’s really going to burst in the coming fiscal environment, and no doubt with much wailing and keening from the “liberal” education racket.