The Pros And Cons Of College Grants

In recent years, there has been a tremendous increase in student enrollment in higher education after high school effecting the need for financial aid for all students. Education has become a growing part in America where more students want to better their lives with a college education. However, the cost of college tuition has increased and more students find themselves struggling to pay off the enormous tuition rates. In a recent study by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, student debt has reached $1 trillion in federal loan debt. Student loan debt has crippled the economy and students are struggling to pay off federal loans. In order to help students with the high tuition rates of college the government and universities offer

Adding such merit based criteria to Pell Grants means there will be a wide variety of people who are not eligible and thus cheapens the program. Goldrick considered the last merit-based Pell Grant, the Academic Competitiveness Grant (ACG). When it was implemented in 2006, the ACG gave the Pell Grant to students who took more rigorous high-school work. However, it served far less students than expected, adding substantially to administrative cost, and viewed as a failure (Goldrick, 3). Their idea behind this last-merit based program was to lessen the amount of people who were in need of the Pell Grant, and thus lessening cost. However, to improve its cost effectiveness there needs to be more low-income families enrolling in postsecondary schooling. Basing the Pell Grant off academic successfulness has proven ineffective and serves the opposite purpose of making college more affordable for all

Limiting that to students who are “college ready” will defeat the purpose of a Pell Grant and leave millions of American students unable to pay for college. To obtain a Pell Grant students must have a high school diploma and then they will be eligible. Requiring students to take rigorous courses and scoring high on the SAT, ACT, or any other standardized test should only be considered when looking at completive schools, not when deciding whether or not a student is eligible to receive financial aid.

“The data suggest that removing the Pell Grant from less-prepared students will not compel many of them to forgo college. Instead, they will enroll, and without grant aid, they will take on debt, even more than they already had to” (Goldrick, 3). This will make a serious impact on the economy because students who didn’t perform academically well in high school will have a tougher time paying of the mass debt at the while they attend