Pell Grant Information Site

Health Care Bill Increases Pell Grant Funding

The recently passed health care bill includes several pieces of legislation that involves Title IV. Title IV is the governmental code word for federal financial aid for college students. The one facet we are going to cover in this article is the part that includes Pell Grant funding.

The Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act is the piece of the health care bill that involves financial aid for college and more specifically the increased funding for the Pell Grant. For the current 2009-2010 school year the maximum amount of aid you can get with the Pell Grant is $5350 and that will be raised to $5550 for the upcoming 2010-2011 school year that will start in fall on 2010. If you are planning on attending college in fall of 2010 and you want to apply for the Pell Grant, you must file the 2010-2011 FAFSA that was released on January 1st, 2010.

The new amounts that were passed with the bill will increase the Pell Grant to a maximum of $5975 by 2017 and the increases will coincide with the consumer price index with the cost of living. This increase is miniscule compared to the gigantic increases in the cost of going to college, but in our opinion, it is better than no increase at all.

The money to pay for the increase in the Pell Grant is going to come from the savings of 61 billion dollars over 10 years coming from the elimination of subsidies to banks offering college student loans. The federal government was giving banks subsidies for offering student loans to students and then also guaranteeing the loans as well. The banks were taking no risk and collecting huge amounts of money so the government is going to directly loan the students’ money and save billions of dollars.

This legislation included in the healthcare bill to increase Pell Grant funding is vital to college students everywhere and we hope the increased amounts will help more students achieve the goals of going to and finishing college.