Spellings Announces Bush Administration's Pell Grant Increase for 08 Budget

Secretary Spellings announced today that the President's Fiscal Year 2008 Budget (due out on Monday) will include an increase in the maximum Pell Grant award to $4,600. The increase would be the largest jump in decades if Congress hadn't acted this week to raise the maximum award to $4,310 on what's left of the 2007 budget.

Everyone should remember this moment-we have our leaders fighting over who can make college more affordable for low-income students.

Here's the AP's story on this. What the Secretary did not announce today is whether the budget will cut billions of dollars in other federal program that target the same low-income students to pay for the Pell increase. We'll have to wait until Monday for the potentially dirty details. Here are my thougths from the article:

Luke Swarthout, higher education advocate at the U.S. PIRG, a public interest group, applauded the announcement but also said it's important to see how the increase will be paid for.

"Provided that the administration is not robbing Peter to pay 'Pell,' this could be a very meaningful increase for low-income students all across the country," he said.