In 2012 Congress cut Pell Grants for students without a high school degree or GED, but a bipartisan group of congressmen now wants to bring them back.
The grants were provided for “ability to benefit” students—students who had no high school education but could take a skills test to prove they had the ability to benefit from further study.
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Congress shut down that loophole, mandating that all grant recipients must have a high school education.
The aid was cut partly in an effort to trim the program, and partly because Democrats were taking aim at for-profit colleges, which these particular grants tend to benefit. There is also concern that the students benefiting from the program were more likely to default on their loans.
Democrats Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Republicans Chris Gibson (R-N.Y.) and Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) are now working together to bring back the program, reports Inside Higher Ed.
Yearlong grants were also cut in 2012, which allowed students to take out two loans a year in order to fund Summer education. Reviving those loans is also on the table, although the congressmen have proposed only allowing the grants for full-time, rather than part-time study.
The ability to benefit program, when it still existed, served a relatively small number of students. From Inside Higher Ed:
