More crazy nutty student debt...

[dfrecore]

I was the one who mentioned poverty. With the increase in tuition pell grants do not cover the full amount of a students tuition at many schools, and not all students seek to attend "the local community college." When I first began my college career I worked in the financial aid office at my local community college (work study), and you had to have little to no income to be given the full pell grant amount. For students who worked, but were still under the poverty line many had to take out loans to pay the remaining balance. So while most people may not see poverty as an issue it is. Pell grants do not cover everything.

When you say the word "poverty", I take that to mean the Federal poverty limit. 95.5% of Pell grants are given to students whose families make less than $50k. That is WELL above poverty. That's above the poverty level for a family of EIGHT. If you're talking a mom and 1 kid, she would have to make less than $15k to qualify as poverty-level, and that would certainly get a pell grant for the full amount.

And if the student decided to go to the local community college for 2 years and then the local state college for the remaining 2 years, the pell grant could conceivably cover the full cost of tuition for all 4 years of college; at minimum, you could work VERY part time and be able to afford to pay out of pocket.

Of course, this assumes that people will do what they can to avoid student loan debt. If they choose not to do those types of things to avoid debt, then please don't say it's because of "poverty" because most likely, it's not. It's because of choices made.