Journal of Education Finance

In 1982 and 1983, the Hispanic Higher Education Coalition under the leadership of Michael A. Olivas helped the U.S. House Postsecondary Education Subcommittee chaired by Paul Simon (D-Ill.) organize the first hearings by a congressional committee on Hispanic Access to Higher Education. The subcommittee approached the 1984 reauthorization of the Higher Education Act,¹ and at its Houston hearing received a staff report that found while numbers of Hispanics in college were increasing, because of the appallingly high rates of Hispanic dropout from high school, there was an actual decline of Hispanic students as a percentage of the whole Hispanic population.² Texas Tech University's Lauro Cavazos, one of the first Hispanics to serve as a major university president, testified that "The major disincentives for Hispanic students include financial, personal, and academic obstacles, and sometimes a combination of these," and that Hispanic students often have "a lack of understanding of the personal commitment required for success," and "...often drop out due to the lack of resources for college."³

Then as now, stable funding for the Federal Pell Grant program, the largest grant program administered by the U.S. Department of Education and America's foundational program to providing equal postsecondary access to all citizens, was recognized as important. In 2019-20, Pell provided $29.5 billion to 6.7 [End Page 289] million students, including $19 billion to support 4.1 million students at 1,497 public higher education institutions. By public sector, $3.4 billion went to the 0.7 million students attending America's 107 flagship universities, $6.4 billion to the 1.3 million enrolled at 439 regional universities, and $8.8 billion to the 2.1 million students enrolled at America's 951 community colleges. For 50 years, Pell's need-based grants have helped academically-talented low income students finance college.

This article analyzes U.S. Department of Education data on appropriations on Pell Grants using the new Mission-Driven Classification (MDC)⁴ to disaggregate enrollment, finance, and need-based Pell Grant data by major public higher education sector and, within community colleges, by geography (rural, suburban, and urban) as well as by the presence or lack of local funding. Three key takeaways from The University of Alabama's Education Policy Center's (UA/EPC) 20 studies of federal Pell Grants since 2011 are: first, the best way to keep college affordable and debt manageable is to avoid large debt in the first place; second, for students to graduate, they first must be enrolled; and third, the millions of needy students and our nation's 951 U.S. community colleges that serve them deserve stable, sustainable Pell funding.

Sadly, since the Great Recession, volatile Pell Grant program funding has shown the federal government to be an unreliable partner for states and institutions to deliver the promise of access and completion. When combined with the state operating budget cuts simultaneously implemented in Fall 2012, first-generation students and the colleges serving them have been challenged, especially at the 496 with no local funding. The confusion is not limited to Federal Application for Student Financial Aid (FASFA) forms, it is embedded in published research consistently using the maximum and not the average Pell grant as a yardstick for access. Few students in 2019-20 received the maximum Pell of $6,195, awarded only when family income was below $24,000 and Expected Family Contribution is therefore $0.⁵ Our analysis uses Average Pell—the dollars actually received—that students, families, and financial aid counselors use to assess affordability Average Pell can help to show the interplay between state policies (community college operating budgets cuts, higher tuition) and federal policies (volatile increases and deep cuts in the Pell program) to assess their impact on student access. [End Page 290]