Rising Pell grant awards are not keeping pace with rising tuition
and a new report shows that they are depriving needy students of
educational choice
WASHINGTON
While the average Pell grant award has more than
doubled between 1977 and 1997, the grant’s actual worth has declined by
approximately 50 percent. And that, said officials from the
organizations that produced a recently released report on federal
grants and college affordability, is particularly disturbing news for
students from low-income families.
In 1977, the average Pell grant award was $759, and that covered 39
percent of the cost of a public four-year institution and 19 percent of
the cost of a private four-year institution. Twenty years later, the
average grant was $1,577. But that only covered 22 percent of the price
of public and 9 percent of private four-year schools.
At the upper end of the spectrum, in 1977, the maximum Pell grant
award of $1,400 paid for 72 percent of the cost of a public and 35
percent of a private four-year school. In 1997, the $2,470 maximum paid
for 34 percent of public and 13 percent of private four-year
institutions.
The average Pell grant award actually declined by 23 percent —
adjusting for inflation — over two decades, but college prices rose by
49 percent while family incomes crept up by just 10 percent over the
same period.
“The fact remains that the prices are still increasing, and the
lower-income students and parents bear the brunt of that,” said Jamie
P. Merisotis, president of The Institute for Higher Education Policy
(IHEP). The Washington, D.C.-based organization has produced the report
— Do Grants Matter?: Student Grant Aid and College Affordability —
with The Boston-based Education Resources Institute (TERI), a nonprofit
guarantor of privately issued student loans.
The average net price — the sticker price minus the total grant
aid received — of attending a private four-year college for a student
from a family with income below $10,000, for example, rose from $8,178
in 1989-90 to $11,591 in 1996-98 — an increase of 42 percent.
