Pell Grants are booming and at long last a conversation seems to be starting about how to make them more effective. I discuss 5 ideas in this week’s TIME School of Thought column:
A decade ago I was involved in an effort to rethink federal college aid programs in partnership with the Brookings Institution. We brought together a diverse set of thinkers to brainstorm about how to better target federal dollars to help the neediest students. Sounds pretty mundane, right? But it was a circus. People were so miffed by any suggestion of changing the Federal Pell Grant Program that one advocate even circulated a cowardly anonymous poem insulting the wife of a participant. (Who says education policy is boring?) There was hardly any useful data about who was using various federal aid programs because different federal agencies — including the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education — wouldn’t talk to each other. In short, I quickly learned that when it comes to higher education reform, war is Pell…
Have an idea on Pell Grants? Send it to me. Did you know Claiborne Pell was a rugby player in college? You don’t need to worry about roughness if you want to read the entire column at TIME, just click right here.