Impact of House and Senate Budget Proposals to Freeze the Maximum Pell Grant for 10 Years: Making College Even Less Affordable (Chart)

While the President’s proposed budget fully funds the scheduled increases in the maximum Pell Grant and continues to tie it to inflation after 2017, the FY16 House and Senate budget proposals freeze the maximum Pell Grant for 10 years. As recently as the mid 1980s, the maximum Pell Grant covered more than half of the average annual cost of attending a four-year public college. Freezing the maximum grant for the next 10 years would reduce the share of covered costs from an already record low of 29 percent in 2015-16 to just 20 percent by 2025-26, making college even less affordable.

Sources: Calculations by TICAS on data from the College Board, 2014,Trends in College Pricing 2014, Table 2, http://bit.ly/1F9qoJv; and U.S. Department of Education data on the maximum Pell Grant. The maximum Pell Grant for 2015-16 was announced in the Department of Education’s Pell Grant Payment and Disbursement Schedules,http://ifap.ed.gov/dpcletters/GEN1502.html. College costs are defined here as average total in-state tuition, fees, and room and board costs at public four-year colleges. Projected college costs for future years were estimated by using the average annual increase in costs over the most recent five years.