The Pell Grant program, which the federal government spent $34 billion on in 2014, has become a way to measure how well colleges serve the underprivileged. The more Pell Grant recipients a college enrolls, the story goes, the more they’re helping to increase college access.
But using Pell to measure access for low-income students can do more harm than good, according to a new report. While it matters how many Pell students colleges enroll, it also matters how much those students pay.
The report, published by New America and written by senior policy analyst Stephen Burd, examined colleges' average net price for students whose families make less than $30,000. It found that, between 2013 and 2014, hundreds of colleges charged disadvantaged students more than half of their families’ yearly earnings.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/03/16/why-colleges-use-financial-aid-attract-wealthier-students