Why Advocates Want a $200 Increase to the Pell Grant

Despite a multibillion-dollar budget deficit for the Pell Grant program, higher education advocates are calling on Congress to increase the maximum award by $200 ahead of this year’s budget negotiations. 

That’s because after three years of flat funding, the Pell Grant—a need-based aid program that has helped low-income college students cover the costs of attending college for more than 50 years—isn’t as valuable as it once was. According to an estimate from the National College Attainment Network, if Pell had kept pace with inflation, the maximum grant would be $8,109, or $714 more than the current maximum of $7,395. At the peak of its purchasing power in the 1970s, the Pell Grant covered 80 percent of cost of attendance; nowadays, it covers about 29 percent.

And that makes it harder for low-income students to pay for college, even as net tuition and fees have plateaued or fallen at most higher education institutions in recent years, advocates say.

“For a lot of students right now, tuition and fees is less than half of the total cost of attendance. It’s the cost of housing, food, books and technology that’s fueling the increases,” said Catherine Brown, senior director of policy and advocacy at NCAN, which is among a coalition of advocacy organizations urging Congress to raise the maximum award. “Unless we want to see fewer students going to college and completing college, we have to maintain Pell’s purchasing power.”

But NCAN and other groups aren’t asking Congress to make up for the full inflation adjustment. Instead they’re requesting just a $200 increase in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget, which Congress must pass by Sept. 30. “[Two hundred dollars] isn’t sufficient to restore the purchasing power of Pell,” Brown said, “but it would be a down payment on what’s needed to keep college in reach for low-income students.”

‘Heavy Lift’ Despite Political Support

Although the Pell Grant program has long had strong bipartisan support, asking for an increase may be an especially tough sell as Congress grapples with a projected $17 billion shortfall in the program driven by an uptick in the number of grant recipients since lawmakers expanded eligibility in 2020.

Last year, President Trump unsuccessfully sought to cut the maximum Pell award by $1,685 amid a much smaller $2.7 billion shortfall in the program. Despite a much larger deficit this year, the Trump administration’s current budget proposal doesn’t call for cuts, but rather an infusion of $10.5 billion to help shore up the program. However, the administration’s plan would achieve that by cutting dozens of other education grant programs, including TRIO and GEAR UP, to the disappointment of those advocating for a Pell increase. At the same time, the administration is also aiming to keep flat the maximum award for a fourth consecutive year. Advocates have warned that if Congress doesn’t address the shortfall this year, cuts to the program are likely.

“It’s going to be hard [to raise the maximum] this year given the fiscal pressure the program is under,” said Jonathan Elkin, director of government relations for the Association of Community College Trustees, which is one of the groups advocating for a $200 increase. “The critical thing is to preserve and protect Pell Grant funding and not lose sight of the importance of increasing it so students can pay for the cost of living.”

Nonetheless, hundreds of lawmakers have already voiced support for Pell Grant funding to varying degrees.

In March, more than 140 Democratic members of the House wrote a letter asking the leaders of the U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations’ Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to double the current maximum individual award to $14,790 and “secure the long-term affordability impact” of the Pell Grant program by indexing the maximum award amount to inflation and funding it through mandatory, rather than discretionary, funding. (Doubling the maximum award is a long-term goal for many higher ed advocates, though the widening shortfall has appeared more and more out of reach.)

Weeks later, dozens of Republican House members also penned a letter to the subcommittee to express their “continued support for prioritizing robust funding” for federal Pell Grants, though they stopped short of specifying a dollar figure.

And in April, more than 40 Democratic senators sent another letter to appropriators asking them to ensure that the program is “funded at a level that meets the needs of students, keeping pace with inflation and preventing cuts that would keep talented students from pursuing postsecondary education.” Even as they address the shortfall, the senators added, “it is essential” that the subcommittee—which will send its marked-up bill to the full appropriations committee—“increase funding for Pell Grants, to ensure that eligible students can continue to participate in the program and will not see their grants reduced.”

Despite that momentum, getting Congress to vote to increase the maximum Pell Grant will be “a pretty heavy lift at this point,” said Andrew Gillen, a research fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom who has also advocated for doubling the grant—and paying for it by cutting other programs, such as the Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant. “While I don’t think there’s any appetite for decreasing it,” he said, “the safest assumption is that the status quo will remain.”

But that’s no reason to give up the fight, said Chandra Scott, executive director of Alabama Possible, which also supports increasing the maximum Pell award.

“Yes, the shortfall needs to be reckoned with. But it shouldn’t stop us from also saying that we also need to increase max Pell,” she said. “We have to ask for it regardless. That’s the only way to continue to elevate the importance of it.”