Pell Grant plan unsure
President Bush has made a commendable commitment to the federal Pell
Grant program, which helps lower-income students attend college. In a
speech in Florida last week, he pledged to eliminate the program's current
$4 billion deficit and increase the maximum grant by $100 for each of
the next five years. But it's not clear that the increased costs can be
paid for by potential savings suggested in the president's sketchy proposal.
And Mr. Bush will really need to push Congress to help him make good on
his promises.
As more high school graduates pursue a postsecondary education, particularly
in a bad economy, demand for the Pell Grant program has grown. Since 2000,
more than a million students have been added to the rolls -- for an expected
total of 5.2 million students by September 2005. The enormous expansion
has created a $4.3 billion deficit in the $12 billion program.
Mr. Bush thinks that enough savings can be wrung out of the student loan
program, by making it more “effective and efficient,” to eliminate
the Pell Grant deficit. The administration suggests that can be done by
reducing the government's subsidies to banks and other private lenders
that actually provide the loans, among other possibilities.
As usual, the devil is surely in the details, which should be revealed
when the administration's budget is presented early next month. But Mr.
Bush spoke confidently last week that enough costs can be shaved from
the loan program to guarantee that the maximum Pell Grant will increase
from $4,050 to $4,550 in five years.
Considering that during Mr. Bush's 2000 campaign he proposed raising the
maximum grant to $5,100, but did not follow through; considering that
college costs are increasing at a much faster rate than the cost of living;
and considering that, just last month, the Department of Education updated
income-eligibility standards for Pell Grants that could knock close to
90,000 students off the rolls and reduce grants to about 1.3 million other
students, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is right to caution families
with kids applying to college to “not count their chickens before
they hatch.”
--This editorial appeared in
Thursday's Baltimore Sun
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