Just as it wants students to speed up, government won’t pay for summer courses - Matt Krupnick, Hechinger Report

It’s a conundrum under which the government on the one hand wants to increase the number of people with university and college degrees, but on the other tells them, “If you take more [credits] during the summer, we’re not going to help you,” said Sandy Baum, a higher-education analyst who consults for the College Board and other groups. Congress decided that the two-year experiment with making Pell grants available for summer classes was too expensive, and President Barack Obama agreed to eliminate it. That saved up to $8 billion per year, the U.S. Department of Education said at the time. Now lawmakers are considering bringing back the summer Pells in some form. But they’re also struggling to keep up with increases in tuition that have propelled the annual cost of Pell grants for the traditional academic year above $33 billion. http://hechingerreport.org/content/just-wants-students-speed-government-wont-pay-summer-courses_16086/