Education and training beyond high school are increasingly the keys to economic opportunity. A college degree or other advanced training opens the door to greater economic success and a chance to participate more fully in the American dream. This is why the first piece of legislation I chose to sponsor in the 109th Congress is a resolution calling on the Senate to strengthen the Pell Grant program so that more families can afford higher education. The Pell Grant program is the single largest source of federal grant aid for postsecondary education. It provides grants to students based on the level of financial aid needed to support their studies at the institutions they have chosen to attend. For this fiscal year, the Pell program is funded at $12.8 billion and is estimated to serve more than 5.3 million students. Our system of higher education is in many ways the envy of the world, but its benefits have not been equally available. Unfortunately, it is still the case that one of the most determinative factors of whether students pursue higher education is their family income. Students from families with incomes above $75,000 are more than twice as likely to attend college as students from families with incomes of less than $25,000. Studies demonstrate the negative effect of unmet financial need on college attendance for even the most academically prepared students. Among even the most highly qualified high school students, those from low-income families were 43% less likely to attend college than their wealthier counterparts. To help remedy these inequities, the federal government has wisely invested in a need-based system of student financial aid designed to help remove the economic barriers to higher education; the Pell Grant program has been central to this effort over the past thirty years. This program was designed as the cornerstone of federal student assistance. Unfortunately, the purchasing power of the Pell Grant has eroded significantly in recent years, forcing students to rely increasingly on loans to finance higher education. In 1975, the maximum Pell Grant covered approximately 80% of the costs of attending a public, four-year institution. Today, it covers less than half of these costs, forcing students to make up the difference by taking on larger and larger amounts of debt. The decline in the value of grant aid and the growing reliance on loans bring other negative consequences. The staggering amount of loans can force some students to abandon their plans to attend college altogether. According to the College Board, low-income families are significantly less willing, by almost 50%, to finance a college education through borrowed money than their wealthier counterparts. That does not surprise me. Many working families in Maine are committed to living within their means. Understandably, they are extremely wary of the amount of debt that is now required to finance a college education. I also know this to be true from my experiences as a college administrator at Husson College. At Husson, 85-90% of students currently receive some sort of federal financial aid, and approximately 60% of students receive Pell Grants. Linda Conant, the financial aid director at Husson, told me, "You cannot imagine how difficult it is to sit with a family and to explain to them the amount of loans that are needed to finance a postsecondary degree. It scares them. That is why Pell Grant aid is so important for low-income families. For these families, loans don't always work, but Pell does." I also heard from Judy Kenney from Northern Maine about the importance of Pell Grants. Judy lives in Castle Hill, not far from my hometown of Caribou. Her daughter and son were able to attend college with the help of Pell Grants. She shared with me, "At the time, my husband was farming and having a rough go of it, and I was a teacher and didn't make much. But the Pell Grants my children received made it possible for them to graduate, one from the University of New England and one from Thomas College. Without these grants, they couldn't have finished, and now they are making good wages and paying taxes!" Judy couldn't be more right on both counts. Not only can the typical bachelor's degree recipient expect to earn about 73% more over a lifetime than a high school graduate, a college graduate typically contributes 100% more in federal income taxes than the average high school graduate. So this is truly a federal investment that pays for itself over the long run. We also know that a well-educated workforce is crucial to our economic future and competitiveness in the global economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projected that over the next ten years there will be significant growth in jobs requiring at least some postsecondary education. So increasingly, higher education is going to be necessary to ensure employability and to prepare Americans to participate in tomorrow's economy. The resolution I wrote calls on the Senate to raise the Pell maximum grant award to $4,500, a $450 increase in a single year. This increase is long overdue. The maximum grant award has been essentially level-funded for four straight years – at $4,050 for the past three years and only a $50 increase in the 2002 fiscal year. During these four years, think of the students who might have entered college and graduated with a degree, if only they had received additional Pell Grant aid. Pell Grants are targeted to the neediest of students – recipients have a median family income of only $15,200. An additional $450 in Pell Grant aid may very well be the deciding factor on whether such students can pursue their college dreams. The resolution also calls on the Senate to amend the Higher Education Act to provide higher authorization levels for the Pell maximum grant that would allow for a doubling of the maximum grant to $9,000 over the next five years. This is an ambitious goal, but a worthy one for a nation that understands the opportunities that a college education supplies. The bill I wrote has received support from the Student Aid Alliance, a coalition of more than sixty organizations representing students, colleges and universities; and I am pleased to have their support. Now is the time for Congress to make a commitment to raising the Pell maximum award to $4,500 for the upcoming award year. It is my hope that this bill will move forward so we can ensure greater access to quality higher education for all Americans, regardless of their financial means.
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