College board seeks boost in funding for Pell grants

WASHINGTON - The College Board, the folks who administer the SAT, wants the federal government to boost Pell Grant funding enough to cover the average cost of tuition, fees, room and board for a student attending a four-year public school.\nThe recommendation is among 10 made Wednesday by the College Board's panel of policy makers, higher education representatives and private business leaders as part of the board's National Dialogue on Student Financial Aid.\nThe panel found that while student loans have "an important and appropriate place" in a school's need-based aid formula, "replacing grants with loans raises the net price of a college education, placing it beyond the reach of large numbers of qualified but needy students."\nThe panel urged the federal government to raise the maximum Pell Grant amount to cover the average total of tuition, fees and room and board - or about $9,700 for the 2002-2003 academic year.\nThere is currently a $3,750 maximum for Pell Grants, which are designated to assist low-income student attending college.\n"We really have to really be aware today, in a time of conversations about tricky budgets and reduced taxes, that maybe we're finding ourselves in a place where some people are talking about taking away from education rather than investing in education," said College Board president Gaston Capteron.\nThe federal government also should study ways to make the Pell Grant program a national entitlement, as well as ways to make grant commitments to low-income students as early as in the middle school years, the panel recommended.\nThe College Board, a New York-based nonprofit best known as owner of the SAT, is a membership association composed of more than 4,200 schools, colleges, universities, and other educational organizations.\nThe group also wants states and colleges to reaffirm their commitment to need-based student aid, helping to enroll more students from low-income and underrepresented background. States specifically should ensure that growth in merit-based financial programs does not come at the expense of need-based funding, it said.\nColleges have more than doubled their grant aid to students over the last decade, the panel found.\n"Data indicate, however, that institutional grants are increasingly linked not just to need but also to test scores," it said. "The increasing reliance on test scores in awarding institutional aid places students in segregated and unequal elementary and secondary schools at a decided disadvantage."\nThe College Board's National Dialogue series was created to "revive and refocus" the way the country thinks about financial aid so that "unfettered access to higher education is once again at the center of our country's educational funding priorities."\n"If we do not turn the national conversation back to investment in education access and away from tax reduction, 'No Child Left Behind' will become just an empty phrase, representing broken promises, broken aspirations and broken dreams," Caperton said, referring to the sweeping education reforms championed by President Bush.\nAmong other recommendations, the federal panel said the federal government should:\n-Expand loan forgiveness for "students who enter and remain in certain key occupations and those who serve in high-need areas."\n-Increase the funding for federal matching programs to persuade states, institutions, and private entities to provide more need-based subsidies to students. The federal government should also increase its level of support directly to institutions that serve large percentages of minorities.\n-Look at ways to simplify the financial aid application process for students and reduce the paperwork that accompanies it.\n-Examine ways to expand the role of clearinghouses that monitor the success of students in such programs as Upward Bound, Talent Search, GEAR UP, and state, college and university, and privately supported early outreach and intervention programs to determine "best practices" in college success for high need students.