President Obama’s proposal last week to increase the federal education budget could impact the 14 percent of Stanford students receiving Pell Grants, faculty and financial aid staff said this week.
Established in 1972, the Pell Grant was created to help low-income students get a college education. The grant is awarded annually to students who are able to prove their financial need via the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, which calculates students’ “expected family contributions” to their education costs. Obama’s plan would bring the federal education discretionary budget to $49.7 billion — a 7.5 percent increase over this year — and step up the amount of assistance offered to each student who depends on financial aid. The amount of the Pell grant would grow by the rate of inflation plus one percent, bringing the grant from today’s $5,550 to about $6,900 in 2019.
“This is one of the largest federal programs to affect low-income students,” said Eric Bettinger, a professor in Stanford’s School of Education. “It’s this program. We don’t have much else.”
According to Bettinger, Pell Grants have not grown with the inflation rate or the rising cost of education in past decades. Anthony Antonio, another education professor at Stanford, agreed.
“The value of the Pell Grant has not kept up with rising college costs so their effectiveness in providing access to low-income students has diminished greatly,” Antonio wrote in an e-mail to The Daily.
According to both professors, this additional federal aid could create significant opportunities: more students could opt to attend a higher-cost university rather than limit their choices to lower-cost community colleges.
“This isn’t going to be a magic bullet that would make families who weren’t originally going to attend go,” Bettinger said. “But it’s a step in the right direction for bringing in low-income families.”
Simplifying the FAFSA, which is notoriously long and tedious, may present a welcome change for students. According to Karen Cooper, director of the Office of Financial Aid, about 50 percent of undergraduates and 1,000 graduate students fill out the FAFSA each year.
“This used to be a form that made you cry when you had to do it,” Bettinger said. “It has definitely become simpler.”
Though many students rely on the FAFSA, Bettinger believes that its impact will be felt less at Stanford than on other campuses.
“If you’re savvy enough to get into Stanford, you’re probably savvy enough to. . .get all of these forms done on your own,” Bettinger said.
Bettinger and Antonio both expect that increased Pell Grant funding, while valuable, would have a limited impact at Stanford.
“Stanford students are fairly affluent and are not the target recipients of Pell Grants . . . Stanford financial aid programs are quite good for low-income students, especially with the recent policy changes,” Antonio said.
Cooper added, however, that the plan might loosen strain on the University budget, making it easier for Stanford to uphold its financial aid commitments.
“The Pell Grant is not going to cover most of the Stanford tuition,” Cooper said. “But we’re certainly never going to turn any help away.”