Are summer Pell grants being eliminated? My classes and degree really require the Pell grant to help me out to get out of school and on with my life. I heard that President Obama is getting rid of summer government aid...
ANSWER:
Yes; summer Pell grants are gone. The budget agreement for 2011 eliminated the federal eligibility for a second award in the same year.
The Department of Education was surprised to find that this program was really popular and many more students took advantage of it than they had thought would. This resulted in much higher costs than they had planned for. Simply eliminating this option is projected to save over $35 billion in ten years.
Although this will cause some students delays in graduation (if their required courses are not offered when they can take them) the alternative was a 15% cut in the regular award for everyone.
No one really advocated for saving the summer Pell grant- the colleges weren't fond of the extra bookkeeping and complicated formulas to figure out who was entitled to what, the Department of Education was somewhat embarrassed at the unexpected costs and to Republicans, it seemed as though students who might push to finish in four years were simply given an incentive to take a couple of extra grants. Even if the government gets a handle on the national debt, this program will probably not return.
