Pell Grants

Claiborne Pell, the quirky blueblood who represented blue-collar Rhode Island in the U.S. Senate for 36 years and was the force behind a grant program that has helped tens of millions of Americans attend college, died Thursday after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. He was 90. Pell died at his Newport home just after midnight, according to his former assistant, Jan Demers. A Democrat, Pell was first elected to the Senate in 1960.

The entire student-loan process should be overhauled to make it easier and cheaper for students to pay for college, according to a report released Tuesday. Among the more than two dozen steps recommended by a private advocacy group are doubling the size of individual Pell Grants and simplifying application procedures. The report was issued by The Institute for College Access & Success, a well-respected group based in Oakland. Many of the recommendations would involve no added cost, according to the group.

President Obama's budget blueprint would expand the Pell Grant program to nearly $35 billion in aid next year, an increase of more than 92% for the college funding program for low- and moderate-income families since he took office. The hike would make the program available to an additional 1 million students and increase their maximum annual awards to $5,710 from $5,350, an administration official said late Friday. When it is released Monday, the Obama budget will also propose making the Pell Grant an entitlement program like Medicare and Social Security.

Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney referred to a plan to give Massachusetts students a “tuition free” education at state schools. He is correct that it covers tuition, but students did not get a free ride. Fees, for example, and other costs were not included. Also it's worth noting that Massachusetts is a relatively high tax state, with more funding for public education. The former Massachusetts governor also referred to supporting Pell Grants, which are federal funds that support the education of the lowest-income students.

Federal education funds being used to lease luxury automobiles and take Club Med vacations? That's the charge leveled against a chain of Los Angeles-area trade schools by a Senate subcommittee that has conducted a yearlong inquiry into the U.S. Department of Education's Pell Grant program. IADE American Schools closed its doors in March after FBI agents raided the school's administrative offices and seized its financial records.

More than 4,000 students have collected Pell grants for 11 years or more, and in one case a student got the federal money for 19 years, Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) said Wednesday. The Education Department discovered the long-term tuition subsidies for 4,095 students when it examined its files to answer a series of questions Nunn had posed as part of a probe by the Senate permanent subcommittee on investigations. "I am not surprised by this revelation," Nunn said in a statement.

About 1.2 million college students receiving federal aid could be forced to cover a greater share of their tuition costs under new guidelines tucked into this year's omnibus spending bill, now awaiting President Bush's signature. The proposed change came as Congress decided to freeze the maximum Pell Grant -- the largest federal grant program in the nation -- at $4,050 for the third consecutive year.

President Bush said Friday that his new budget would call for raising the maximum Pell Grant by $100 annually over the next five years, a $15-billion proposal that would increase the grants for low-income college students to $4,550 a year. The president also said that the budget he would submit Feb. 7 would close a $4.3-billion shortfall in the Pell Grant program over the course of a decade.

To make up an estimated $1.3-billion shortage for a popular college tuition grant program, the Bush administration is proposing to cut funding for hundreds of local education and community projects that lawmakers singled out for federal aid late last year.

The sound of the national debate on tougher prison sentencing echoes in the ears of John Whitley like the wind in this rugged 18,000 acres of prison land on the banks of the Mississippi. "It's the politically popular thing to be saying right now," said Whitley, who until recently was warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary. The prison houses more than 4,600 men, with two-thirds on Death Row or serving "practical life" sentences of up to 400 years.

Former figure skater Michelle Kwan announced that she is engaged to marry Clay Pell, a member of the White House's national security staff. "It was a simple decision and it made sense," Kwan, 32, told People magazine . Wow, that sounds so romantic. Kwan, 32, won nine U.S. figure-skating championships, five world championships and two Olympic medals before retiring in 2005. Pell, 30, proposed on Sept. 3 on Block Island off the coast of Rhode Island. The couple first met in April 2011.

Four years ago, GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin -- then a relatively obscure governor of a remote state -- made a barn-burning speech at the Republican National Convention that vastly exceeded the punditry's (admittedly low) expectations. Although things went downhill from there for Palin, it was a clutch performance that helped establish the then-governor of Alaska as a national figure. The expectations will be quite a bit higher for Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the GOP's current nominee for vice president, when he steps up to the microphone Wednesday night.

RENO -- As his campaign calibrates its message to the new fight against Mitt Romney and running mate Paul D. Ryan -- a leading House Republican -- President Obama repeatedly singled out the Senate's top Democrat as he took his education message to Nevada on Tuesday evening. In the audience for Obama's campaign rally at a community college here was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, elected in 2010 to his fifth term representing the Silver State. And in a campaign in which House Republicans have long been a proxy for attacks on Romney, Obama notably played up his partnership with Reid in fighting for the middle class.

The phrase "supply side" usually calls up visions of Ronald Reagan and the Laffer curve . That's because it typically refers to supply-side economic theory , which argues that the way to promote production and economic growth is to cut marginal tax rates, especially the higher ones on upper incomes. I'm not an economist, but I'd argue that there's a second version of supply-side thinking at work in Washington these days. On a number of social programs, Republicans are trying to reduce the supply of federal dollars on the theory that the aid has driven up prices far faster than ordinary inflation.

PHILADELPHIA - When President Obama told a Russian leader that he could be "more flexible" after the election - during what he thought was a private conversation - Mitt Romney came down like a hammer. He accused his Democratic rival of "pulling his punches with the American people" and hiding his real agenda. Romney found himself in similar circumstances Monday after he was heard telling donors at a Florida fundraiser that while he planned to slash government programs, he probably would not share those plans with voters before November.

For almost a week, Nate Grant has sat cross-legged on a wall at the Occupy Wall Street encampment, holding a cardboard sign that bears his scrawled grievance: "Students Ought Not Be a Means of Profit. " Strangers have harangued him: "Get a job, you commie. " Tourists have photographed him. Others have stopped to engage in existential standoffs. "I have to pay interest on my car loan," a banker told Grant. "What's the difference between that and you paying off a student loan?" This sparked a debate that lasted so long that the 22-year-old protester from New Jersey missed out on getting a free sleeping bag. He spent his first night at the protest sleeping on cold concrete.

As an inmate in the medium-security Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Norfolk, Tom Farina was serving a five-year term for armed robbery and armed burglary when he turned his life around. He entered the Boston University Prison Program, and by the time he was released in 1985, he was 12 credits away from completing a bachelor's degree, paid for by a federal Pell grant.

University of California students would take a nearly $55-million hit from reductions in Pell grants. A $20-million check promised for bringing a rail line closer to the L.A. airport would be taken back. Head Start cuts would eliminate about 14,000 slots for low-income children in California. Those are among the possible effects on California in the budget-cutting bill approved Saturday by the House's new Republican majority ? legislation that would cut about $1.5 billion in federal money going to California, according to one estimate.

University of California students would take a nearly $55-million hit from reductions in Pell grants. A $20-million check promised for bringing a rail line closer to the L.A. airport would be taken back. Head Start cuts would eliminate about 14,000 slots for low-income children in California. Those are among the possible effects on California in the budget-cutting bill approved Saturday by the House's new Republican majority ? legislation that would cut about $1.5 billion in federal money going to California, according to one estimate.

The University of California, sensitive to criticism about student fee hikes, reported Friday that more low-income undergraduates than ever are enrolling at its campuses and said financial aid is helping them to stay. An estimated 70,000 UC undergraduates are receiving federal Pell grants, which typically are awarded to students with family incomes below $50,000. According to the report, that is the largest number in UC history and represents 39% of its undergraduates, up from 35% last year.