Claiborne Pell 1918-2008, champion of accessible higher education

Lauren Starkey:

Over six million low-income college students this year received Pell Grants, and its likely that most of them aren't familiar with their originator, Claiborne Pell. This morning, the Rhode Island senator (who retired in 1997 after his sixth term) passed away at his home in Newport. He was 90, and died after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. His work will live on, however, in the lives and deeds of the students who attend college due in large part to his insistence that access to higher education be available to as many students as possible.

In 1972, Pell drafted legislation that created the Basic Educational Opportunity Grants, which were renamed Pell Grants in 1980. At the time of his retirement in 1994, the Grants provided aid to over 54 million low- and middle-income students (90% of recipients have family incomes of $40,000 or less). In 2008, the US Department of Education reports that the program awarded almost 5.6 million grants totaling $16.4 billion.

The New York Times in September called Pell Grants "the most important form of aid to needy students, and for millions, whether recent high school graduates or those who have been working for years, higher education would be impossible without such aid." The grants have been threatened with funding cuts throughout their 36-year existence. Pell told Times in 1996 that although the Grant program "exceeded [his] wildest hopes," he believed it should have become an entitlement, protected from Senate budget conflicts.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 3, 2009 3:11 AM
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