A ‘promising’ way to help low-income students to and through college

Despite the government’s huge investment in the program, the college-going rates of low-income students continue to lag far below those of their more-affluent peers. In fact, the gap in college attendance between the highest- and lowest-income students remains as wide as it was in the 1970s, when Congress created the Pell Grant program. Many financial-aid advocates and college lobbyists say that the only problem with the government’s student aid programs is that they have not been adequately financed. After all, the percentage of the cost of attending a public four-year college that is covered by the maximum Pell award has fallen significantly over the past 40 years—from 77 percent in 1979-80 to 30 percent in 2014-15. These advocates argue that if Congress dramatically increased the maximum grant amount, millions more low-income students would be able to gain access to college.