By Jeff Keith
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Last week, President-Elect Joe Biden reaffirmed his support for erasing some student debt and emphasized that his administration would dedicate more federal aid to lower the cost of college, including doubling funding for Pell Grants. Calls to increase funding for Pell are not new, but less talked about is the notion of reforming the Pell system itself.
First conceived as part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s War on Poverty, Pell aimed “not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” The federal government today spends about $30 billion a year (100 times what it spent in 1973) on the program. But while the funding has grown, Pell is still falling short of its economic mobility aspirations.
Read more on The Hill.