easy sell

[besthost]

The restructuring of higher education is a very easy sell to the majority of Ohioans because an unregulated, redundant higher education system equals high tuition.


Could anyone explain to me the phrase in bold?

[David L.]

It won't take much/it won't be difficult to convince people it's a good idea.
(As opposed to some car in a used car lot that a salesman has to do some pretty hard sales talk to get somebody to buy the heap of junk.)

[susiedqq]

To "sell an idea" to someone is to try to convince them. It can be an "easy sell" or a "hard sell."

The restructuring of higher education is a very easy sell to the majority of Ohioans because an unregulated, redundant higher education system equals high tuition.

Your sentence says the the people of Ohio will accept the restructuring of higher education, but the reasons don't match the "easy" sell concept.
Unregulated and redundant school systems are not what people want, and neither is high tuition!

The restructuring will be a "hard" sell, if you ask me.

[David L.]

Hang on - let's not confuse besthost or other readers.
The original writer of the sentence believes, for the reasons he quotes, that this makes the idea of restructuring of education in Ohio one that people will readily accept - (that's implied by 'easy sell')
Sussiedqq is commenting that it is her belief that those very same reasons -"unregulated...redundant...' will make this a 'hard sell' because the people of Ohio would object strongly to, for instance, deregulating education.