Pell grants for summer are dropped in budget deal - Tim Barker, St. Louis Today

The federal budget deal that avoided a government shutdown didn't do any favors for needy college students looking to take summer classes. Among all the compromising done by Democrats and Republicans was a plan to trim back the rapidly escalating costs of the Pell Grant program that supports low-income college students. They decided to kill the portion of the program that offers support for the summer semester. It was either that or trim the maximum award — $5,550 — offered to students during the full year. Cutting summer aid, starting in 2012, was the better option in the eyes of some local financial aid officers. A more general across-the-board cut, they said, would have affected a much larger pool of students.