The AFT lauds President Bush's intention to raise the maximum Pell grant by $100 a year for the next five years, but the union warns that the increase should not come at the expense of other education programs.

"This is definitely a step in the right direction and long overdue," says Antonia Cortese, AFT executive vice president. "It is critical that the president follow through…and provide new money so that college will be affordable and accessible." The maximum Pell grant is currently $4,050, an amount that has been frozen for the past three years.

The AFT has made increasing the size of Pell grants and fully funding the program a priority of its higher education legislative agenda. Pells are essential to providing access for low-income families seeking postsecondary education. With the increase, the maximum grant will rise to $4,550 in 2009. This is a far cry from the $5,100 Bush promised to set as the maximum when he was campaigning for his first term in 2000.

In his speech at Florida Community College in Jacksonville on Jan. 14, President Bush also said he would eliminate the chronic shortfall that lawmakers have had to struggle to cover each of the past few years.  Many on Capitol Hill believe that shortfall will be paid for with the proceeds of a new formula for calculating Pell grant eligibility that the Department of Education announced--and Congress passed into law--last year.  That formula cuts 85,000 to 90,000 currently eligible low-income students from qualifying.

How the Bush administration plans to pay for the $100 increase is not clear, but President Bush promised that it could be done without a budget increase.  A document released by the White House says that money could be found by "reforming" the student loan program and "reducing excessive subsidies and program costs."

The president's proposal was met with skepticism in some quarters. "The fact is that so often the administration proposes to increase spending in one account by reducing spending for critical education services in another account," Rep. George Miller (D.-Calif.), ranking member on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, told the Chronicle of Higher Education after the speech. [Barbara McKenna]

January 20, 2005