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Key Congressman Likens Pell Grants to Welfare

April 4, 2011, 1:11 pm

The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee’s panel charged with financing federal student aid warned on Friday that Pell Grants had become “the welfare of the 21st century,” The Huffington Post reports. In a radio interview with Blog Talk Radio, Rep. Denny Rehberg, a Montana Republican, lamented that a student could “go to school for nine years on Pell Grants and you don’t even have to get a degree.” His remarks come as lawmakers are weighing changes in the popular program, which has doubled in cost over the past three years.

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  • katisumas

    Not only is the comment gross but also untrue. Pell grants are limited to 4 years for a BA/BS degree.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QGDDNAXYMWWG6XJ7RF6L2GYKYA dane

    You might want to check your facts. I don’t think it is nine years, but it is more than four.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_QGDDNAXYMWWG6XJ7RF6L2GYKYA dane

    I have known studentsa that have used grants as/like welfare.

  • jimmydg

    From the College Board website:

    Time Limit
    If your child received a Pell Grant for the first time on or after July 1, 2008, there is a limit of 18 semesters, or their equivalent, of Pell Grants. Students can receive up to two Pell Grants in one award year if they wish to accelerate their course work.

  • 11891122

    Can we have some statistics on how much per year a student can get? What percentage of tuition do they actually cover? If students put their grants toward tuition–how is this welfare? They are not able to support themselves, that is feed and shelter themselves on the Pell Grant. I think this is about equal opportunity.

  • 11891122

    Also, if students are going to school part time–which they very likely might if they need to pay for food and shelter–it would take them longer than 4 years. I think, in public universities, six years is not unusual.

  • johnfdolan1

    I am sure the blog world will update the gentleman from Montana with the facts. The question I have is this. How can a person in such a powerful position speak in such terms without any knowledge of the facts? I get his point, but please, take care before you speak about a program that changes so many lives. I am a private, four year, Catholic institution administrator who is surprised by this shoot-from-the-hip remark.

  • schultzjc

    Dear John…you or your institution must be cloistered. As any respectable journalist or discerning citizen knows, speaking without knowledge of the facts is currently the norm and threatens not only journalism as a social agency but all reasoned discourse. Have you heard of Fox “News”? MSNBC? Newt Gingrich? Sarah Palin? etc.?

  • 11142568

    What a sadness, when the chair of the sub-committee on Labor, Health and Human Service, and Education, makes such an ill-informed statement. I work for a private college. Back in 1989 the average tuition at private colleges was $8,700 and the average Pell grant was $1, 400 which covered 16% of the price (In the same year the average public college tuition was $1,700, so that a $1,400 Pell grant would cover 82% of the bill).

    For 2010 the average private college tuition was $27,000, and the average Pell grant was $2,200; thus it would cover about 8% of the price. For publics in the same year, average tuition was $7,600 so that a $2,200 Pell grant would cover about 29% of the price.

    Some welfare! And yes there is a maximum number of terms and you must be making satisfactory academic progress. Adelman’s studies (The Toolbox and the Toolbox Revisited) show that about 2/3 of students who completed 12th grade and started college at a 4 year college finish with a degree. Presumably the percentage of Pell grantees who finish is close to that.

    There is the old knave/fool dilemma. In all charity, one would hope that the Honorable Rehberg is able to evade being gored by the dilemma’s horns. Given the insulting tone of his remarks, he is more likely to fall on the knave horn. Peter Baker

  • akprof

    Hey, it’s not fair to lump MSNBC with FOX, Newt or Sarah. MSNBC may go over the top on occasion but they are pretty factual!!

  • mmccllln

    After working in financial aid for more years than I care to admit, I have seen many students benefit greatly from Pell Grants. However, I also see many who abuse them. Although I do not agree with a ‘welfare’ description of Pell, there definitely need to be changes to the system to make recipients more accountable. I will not say that the current Pell system is inundated with those who abuse it. However, in my own personal experience at both a large public and small private, there is enough of it to warrant more stringent guidelines. Overall, the Pell program is a great concept, but to think there is not a large amount of waste in it is being naive.

  • whm3113

    The current rule is that a student can receive up to 18 semesters of Pell Grant.

  • old nassau’67

    “Montana-based Summit Beverage has committed $500,000 over the next five years in support of The University of Montana Department of Athletics. The gift will support a variety of initiatives within the department, including scholarships,…” (http://www.gogriz.com)

    I lament that a student could “go to the University of Montana on an all-expenses paid athletic scholarship and [not] even have to get a degree”.

  • pnedry

    Pell Grants allow a lot of students to pursue educational opportunities, especially at community colleges. But, as is suggested in the congressman’s remarks, there is some abuse. He may be grossly uninformed, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t some nuggets of truth in what he says.

    Our trustees annually thump their collective chests about how we are committed to keeping our tuition low. One of the results of low tuition, is that it attracts people (students) bent on fraud.

    You see a student can qualify for 1/2 of $5550 per semester, or $2775. After they pay the tuition for a full load (12 semester hours) they get the remainder of the ‘grant,’ clearing about $1,800. They can do this for three semesters before the academic probation system finally kicks them out–then they move on to another college. How do they keep the costs down? Well, for one thing, they do not buy any books. Attendance? The federal reporting requirements, well, “require” that the student participate in the course. The definition of “participation” is set so low that it can often be tripped over. This is particularly acute in online courses. All a student has to do to be declared as having participated is to complete some academic requirement–a post on a discussion board, complete a quiz (not necessarily pass it), or take an exam. They can do that at the beginning of the course before attendance is reported; then login near the end of the course and complete some other event.

    Before you direct your ire toward online instruction, remember–a student can do the same thing in a face-to-face course. Show up early in the semester; then show up and take the final exam–it is not necessary to pass it.

    My colleagues and I have had a student in class where we were the 11th college he had been in–financial aid knew it; student services knew it; but it is the low bar reporting in the system that allows it to continue. So, play your cards right, and you can walk away with 18 semesters X $1,800 or $32,400.

    The college gets to keep the tuition; the college gets to brag about the increase in enrollment; professors have one butt in a seat–one that requires very little labor; but, the fed’s are one day going to hold us accountable for this ‘student’ not completing a certificate, program, or degree–something the ‘student’ never had any intentions of completing.

    The fixes involve increased controls–ie, attendance reporting connected to some level of academic success or ability to benefit. Colleges have been pretty successful at beating back those kinds of intrusions as bureaucratic burdens.

    Can the rotten apples be purged from the barrel without denying the nourishment to those who can benefit from it? My cynical bet is, not in today’s environment.

  • gadget

    My students tell me that if they drop a class, they have their financial aid cut immediately and they have to repay the tuition that Pell paid. If they fail a class, they are penalized for the next Pell award.

    I have heard of students who get the leftover Pell money and skip, but they cannot return to school or get another Pell until they repay. So they can do it once but not more times than that.

  • 11301717

    To some extent it is welfare, for the for-profits who get the bulk of their revenue from this and other Federal sources.

  • davidsheridan

    In my opinion, the likely motivation behind the congressman’s comments has little to do with graduation rates and everything to do with good old fashioned voodoo economics…take a program that benefits the poor, make broad political attacks against it with the hope of eroding its political support. In the current sociopolitical climate, lots of people oppose government spending…if you define “government spending” as “programs that I don’t benefit from.” Meanwhile, this congressman’s party will “create jobs” by giving tax breaks to billionaires and the companies from which they draw their small country GNP-sized salaries.

    Pell Grants have enabled millions of Americans to earn college degrees. Not everyone who starts college finishes for as many reasons as there are students. And every study that I’ve read about shows that even some college leads to higher wages. No program is perfect, but this one has worked awfully well.

    And how much do Republicans really care about graduation rates? The Administration tries to reduce Title IV expenditures at low-performing schools with the gainful employment regulations, and Republicans fight it…for no reason other than the financial damage it would do to the for-profit sector, which is a reliable source of campaign donations for them.

  • megginson

    I am working partly from memory in writing this, so folks can correct me if I’m stating the source of a comment or number of aircraft carriers incorrectly.

    There was a recent post to a Chronicle blog on the amount of money we spend on Pell grants each year, in which it was mentioned that this could buy seven aircraft carriers. In 2008-09 (the last year for which I was able to find data quickly on Pell grant recipients), over six million students received Pell grant aid (and I’m not working from memory on that; go to http://www2.ed.gov/finaid/prof/resources/data/pell-2008-09/pell-eoy-2008-09.html and open Table 1, sheet 5). I don’t recall whether the poster expressed an opinion on the relative value of those, but given limited resources and a choice between building seven aircraft carriers and sending six million Americans to school in a republic that counts on an educated citizenry to make informed decisions, that one struck me as a no-brainer.

    Notice the way Congressman Rehberg came up with his figure, which is technically correct: To construct and then argue from the extreme case, take the 18 terms for which a student could be eligible, convert that to nine possible two-term academic years (not an unreasonable computation in itself), and then state that extreme case with no accompanying statistics concerning the fraction of Pell-supported students who fit it, which will be remembered by some as fairly typical. Many of those six million Pell-supported students are likely to take a course in which they would learn how to spot straw man arguments, and they could then give Congressman Rehberg a lesson on that subject.

  • whm3113

    The difference between building an aircraft carrier and giving individual grants to students to pay their education costs is that providing for the defense of the nation is actually a constitutional obligation of the federal government, where as providing grants to students is not.

    Personally, I don’t believe we need more aircraft carriers, but we also should be setting some priorities as to what is the job of the federal government vs what is the role of state and local governments.

  • missoularedhead

    Given that I, and most of the people I knew, got Pell Grants when we attended the University of Montana, you’d think Rehberg would be behind a program that allows Montanans to attend their in-state flagship schools (MSU being the other). But in my long knowledge of Denny Rehberg, I have discovered that little things like ‘facts’ are not really on his radar. Also, given that his net worth puts him in the top 20 richest Congressmen, it’s likely that he really, truly doesn’t understand that $5500 a year could mean the difference between a minimum wage career and something better.

  • ivalriche

    MSNBC is not factual. Neither is the Huffington Post, which I am disappointed to see quoted in a trade journal for college professors.

  • ivalriche

    Thanks, mmccllln, you are very right. There’s as much abuse and graft involved in student loans as there was in the housing market. People need to stop circling the wagons and admit when there is a problem. But don’t worry, I am sure next year President Obama will make the same critique that this Montana Republican made, and all the liberal academic drones who are racing to bash Danny Rehlberg here will be drooling over Obama’s courage and ability to “ask the tough questions.” Higher Ed is a swamp that needs to be drained. Badly.

  • arrive2__net

    Apparently standards for Pell Grants need to be tightened, but it should be remembered that college grads tend to make more money, and that feeds the economy and pays taxes. I think you can argue that Pell grants are not welfare but are the anti-welfare, helping people who might otherwise need assistance get a good education and a job. I wonder how many Americans have avoided poverty and welfare through Pell Grants. Where would the country be today if those students had not received the help they needed to contribute to the economy? However, preventing fraud and abuse would be supporting the Pell Grant system, and I’m for that. (I made a similar comment at HuffPost.)

    Bernard Schuster
    Arrive2.ne­t
    Twitter.co­m/arrive2_­net

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