VikingKing said:
You're an idiot and don't know anything about what's really going on in the world and with people's lives.VikingKing said:
You already removed yourself from being productive in society by doing nothing with your life. Why haven't you gone to college to get a good paying job like responsible people do?
Looks like your right wingers are trying to take away grants. Read up.
House Republicans want to cut back grants for poor college students
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...to-cut-back-grants-for-poor-college-students/
House Republicans looking for ways to balance the budget want to roll back President Obama's expansion of a federal program allowing many of the country's poorest students attend college.
On Tuesday, the House GOP released a budget memo that would freeze the maximum amount students receive from the government to pay for college; the grants would be held at $5,775 per school year for the next 10 years.
The proposal to limit Pell grants, as the assistance is known, is a part of a broader set of budget priorities that seeks to cut government spending by trillions of dollars over the next decade. It mirrors previous Republican plans to dial back funding for Pell, but this time around the party controls both chambers and has the power to advance the proposal.
Nine million students benefited from the $33.7 billion Pell grant program in the 2013-2014 school year. The program awards money that does not have to be repaid to students from low-income families. Nearly two-thirds of African American undergraduates receive Pell funding, as do 51 percent of Latino undergrads, according to the Education Trust.
The long-standing Pell program is currently running a surplus, but that is expected to dry up by 2017. House Republicans argue that maintaining the current max amount "makes the Pell Grant program permanently sustainable so that it is able to serve students today and in the future."
The Obama administration and both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been tussling over how much money to put in the grant program at a time when many Americans are leaving school with five-figure debt.
President Obama doubled Pell funding in 2010 through savings eked out of reforms to the federal student loan system, but congressional budget agreements the following years cut the benefits by not allowing the grants to be used towards summer school. That change decreased program costs by $5 billion a year.
The administration tried to bolster Pell last year by increasing the maximum award by $100 to $5,775 per school year, which the Education Department said allowed the program to grow 25 percent.
The Institute for the College Access and Success (TICAS) argues that Pell costs have declined 20 percent since 2010 and are projected to remain level over the next 10 years, after adjusting for inflation. The advocacy group pointed out that Obama's proposed budget fully funds the scheduled increases in the maximum award and ties it to inflation after 2017.
Even at its current levels, a Pell grant is not enough to cover the full cost of college for many students. Nine out of ten Pell recipients who graduate from four-year colleges have student loans, and owe on average $4,750 more than their peers, according to TICAS.
The federal grant, much like all other free money, has not kept pace with the cost of going to school. The maximum Pell award covered 77 percent of the cost of attending a four-year public university in 1980, but that fell to 36 percent by 2011, according to the Education Trust.
Aside from freezing the Pell award, Republicans have not provided much details on their higher education priorities.
Senate Republicans released a budget resolution on Wednesday that would no longer guarantee funding for Pell every year and leave it up to Congress' discretion.
“This plan makes no real investments in programs that will prepare American workers for this 21st century economy, and will only make it harder to save money, harder to send a child to college, and harder to enjoy a secure retirement,” said Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA), ranking member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Pell Grants Cover Smallest Portion Of College Costs In History As GOP Calls For Cuts
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/27/pell-grants-college-costs_n_1835081.html
The federal Pell Grant program was designed to help college students coming from low-income families afford the high cost of going to college without getting buried in debt. But the Pell Grant now covers less than one-third of the cost of attendance at public four-year university, the lowest in its history.
Where the maximum Pell Grant once covered the entire cost of obtaining a two-year degree and 77 percent of the cost at a public university in 1980, it now covers only 62 percent of the cost of a two-year degree and 36 percent towards a public four-year degree.
Even though the Pell Grant has never covered such a small fraction, it's been subject to repeated attempts to cut it and make sure it continues to shrink in the future. At the same time, the cost of college is projected to increase faster than inflation.
Meghan McClean, director of policy and federal relations at the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, said the Great Recession has created a "perfect storm": More people are going back to school, states have scaled back higher education support, and tuition is growing faster than the Pell Grant can keep up.
The History
Pell Grants were born during Richard Nixon's presidency. The Basic Educational Opportunity Grant, later renamed the Pell Grant, was created in a 1972 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The HEA was a piece of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society agenda, sometimes referred to as the War on Poverty, and it's subject to reauthorization every five or six years. The Pell Grant was named for Sen. Claiborne Pell, a popular Rhode Island Democrat, who served from 1961 to 1997, and died in 2009.
The population of college students greatly increased during the 1960s and '70s, as the boomer generation headed off to school. After creating a federal student loan program, money which must be paid back after graduation, the Pell Grant program was added to provide money which does not need to be repaid.
The idea was to ensure access to higher education for lower income people, since, according to census data, college graduates earn 82.8 percent more than those who only obtain a high school diploma -- almost twice as much. That gap has been growing quickly since the start of the Pell program.
Declining Support, Increasing Tuition
The cost of obtaining a college degree has increased 1,120 percent over the past three decades, about five times the rate of inflation, and a rate with which the Pell Grant simply isn't able to keep up.
The maximum grant in the first year of the program was $452, but quickly increased to $1,400 within a couple of years. That first year though, the maximum $452 Pell Grant covered almost all of a student's tuition, since the average tuition at public universities in 1973 was $490. Last year, the average in-state tuition was $8,244, while the maximum Pell Grant was $5,550.
Some states set in-state tuition far higher, like Pennsylvania State University, where in-state tuition was $15,250 in 2010-11. And many Pell Grant students do not receive the full $5,550, since the grant amount is dependent on a number of variables including family size and income. Nevertheless, half of recipients come from families earning $15,000 or less annually.
Despite the high cost, more high school graduates are going on to college than in 1973 when the Pell Grant began, but they're also going into debt in the process.
Nine out of ten Pell Grant recipients have student loan debt, according to the Institute for College Access and Success. Data from the Department of Education shows they're more than twice as likely to take out student loans as students not receiving Pell Grants.
Abby Miller, an independent consultant who's worked with the Pell Institute, says the Pell Grant's purchasing power has suffered a "pretty dramatic drop, especially when you look at the amount of loans that Pell recipients are taking out." Miller says student debt over the last 10 years for Pell recipients has increased by 90 percent, while their starting salaries upon graduating have only increased by 9 percent.
So students from the poorest families who receive Pell Grants are graduating college with more debt than ever before.
The income achievement gap between children from the richest families and the poorest has grown during the same period: Thomas Edsall noted in a recent New York Times column that "the income achievement gap between children from the highest and lowest income deciles is roughly 30 to 40 percent larger among children born in 2001 than among those born in 1976."
In addition, as the poverty rate has increased since 2008, the number of people applying for federal financial aid has skyrocketed. The number of Pell Grant recipients has grown from 3.9 million in 2000-01 to 9.1 million in 2010-11.
But instead of supporting this assistance for students pursuing a college degree, Congress has sought to cut Pell Grants and turned the program into a political football.
