Biden's Pell Grant Increase a Good Start to Help Marginalized College Students—but It's Only a Start

In a crisis, any help is better than none. That’s why the Biden administration’s proposal to boost the cornerstone federal funding program for low-income college students is a very welcome step.

The increase in the Pell Grant would mark the first significant boost in federal support for students in the last decade, giving lower income students — who are disproportionately from minority communities — a stronger foundation to access college and to thrive in their studies.

Yet it’s also clear that bumping up the Pell Grant falls far short of what’s needed to fully address the crisis of college affordability and the resulting inequality of student experience and outcomes. Students from marginalized backgrounds face a range of financial barriers to college success that lawmakers must do more to address. Without more fundamental changes, a higher Pell Grant risks being little more than a Band-Aid on a growing wound.

Around 7 million students receive Pell Grants, with an average award amount of just over $4,000 per year, according to a brief by the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. Around 60% of black students and roughly half of American Indian and Hispanic students are Pell recipients, compared to a third of white students.

The grant is a vital — but increasingly tenuous — lifeline for students lacking financial resources. Dependent on discretionary approval each year, increases in the maximum grant have failed to keep up with overall inflation or with the even faster increase in college attendance costs.

“The 2020-21 maximum Pell Grant of $6,495 covers only 26% of the average cost of attendance at a public four-year institution, while the maximum grant in 1975-76 covered more than three-quarters of the cost of attending a public four-year institution,” per the brief mentioned above. As a result, Pell Grant recipients are emerging from college with significantly bigger debt burdens than their non-Pell counterparts — around $6 billion more in total, according to an analysis by the Institute for College Access and Success.

The Biden budget proposal would boost the maximum grant by over $2,000 to $8,670, with a goal of doubling it by 2029. While welcome, the immediate increase only partly makes up for the huge erosion of the Pell Grant’s value in recent decades. Doubling the maximum grant would indeed be significant, but seven years is a long time in Washington politics — and that goal is far from guaranteed.

Truly fixing the Pell Grant would require doubling it now, making its approval mandatory each year, and pegging the award increases to inflation so that it retains its value over time.

Even so, Pell Grants are only one part of the patchwork of funding mechanisms that underprivileged students depend on. Much of the additional aid comes in the form of merit-based scholarship awards, but this disproportionately benefits white, wealthy students. In Louisiana, for example, nearly three-quarters of recipients of the state’s TOPS scholarship program are white, even though white students only make up about half of college freshmen there. In Florida, only 7% of recipients of the Bright Futures award are Black, despite African-Americans making up 17% of the state’s population.

These programs might seem fair because they are merit-based, but they fail to take into account the systemic advantages held by students from wealthier families, such as access to private tutoring. Awards should be more needs-based, taking into account equity-based factors such as a family’s ZIP code and their financial ability to support college attendance costs.

“Ten states and Washington D.C. spend more than two-thirds of their financial aid budgets on grants that reward students for their high school grades and test scores, regardless of family income,” states an article from the Pew Charitable Trusts. This needs to change if we are to make more progress toward equitable, diverse college campuses.

Another disproportionate burden on students who are low-income, first-generation and people of color that needs to be tackled is student debt. As tuition and other college costs have risen, low-income families have increasingly turned to loans. A Brookings Institution study found that Black college students graduate owing $7,400 more than their white peers, a gap that more than triples to $25,000 in the following years. This makes it imperative for Biden to move forward on a massive cancellation of student debt.

Congress should also move forward on the long-delayed renewal of the Higher Education Act, which has been running on temporary extensions since 2008. Doing so would allow lawmakers to update the antiquated FAFSA form, which determines students’ eligibility for federal aid, including low-cost loans, grants and work-study. Instead of focusing narrowly on a family’s reported income as it does now, it should be expanded to take account of other factors that are often more relevant, such as whether a student’s family is expected to contribute and the neighborhood the student is coming from.

Federal and state agencies also need to develop a more sophisticated, up-to-date understanding of what exactly Pell recipients need to better support themselves. A comprehensive study by the Department of Education based on recent data is well overdue.

The depth of the college affordability crisis means that policymakers should be pushing ahead with ideas to support disadvantaged students, rather than expecting a Pell Grant increase to fix the entire problem.

Cobretti D. Williams, PhD, is the senior editor for diversity, equity and inclusion at BestColleges.