The peril of cutting Pell Grants - David Wilson, Baltimore Sun

It is unfathomable that the United States will be cutting off access to a college degree for the great majority of poor students in college today, especially at a time when we have dropped in international rankings of degree attainment. Because lower income students complete college at only a small fraction of the rate of higher income students, we must move many more of these students successfully through the educational pipeline if we are going to regain our status in international competition. Reductions in the Pell Grant program would obviously have a significant negative impact on this goal. The Pell Grant program provides a maximum of $5,500 per year to students who are coming from families who are living at or below the poverty line. Interestingly enough, the overwhelming majority of these students are white. In fact, 46 percent of Pell Grant recipients are white, while 24 percent are black and 20 percent are Hispanic.