When I transferred to a 4-year, I once again filled out the FAFSA and was eligible for an interest-free loan which covered the difference between tuition and my Pell Grant.
Really, the current grant system doesn't work.
We should tell the universities they must provide needs-based grants on their own and prohibit using ability to pay during admissions - or they don't receive federal grants. This way they aren't incentivized to continue to bloat costs (as happens now), since now the school is responsible for the costs.
There’s at least one site showing (oddly enough) private schools with lower tuition than Penn State as well as some non-private [1], but you’re still over the max of a Pell grant
1: https://www.bestvalueschools.org/cheapest-colleges-in-pennsy...
No, tuition rates at some schools are absurd. Max Pell Grant is enough to cover tuition at the three universities closest to me.
I went to community college in 2009. I filed my FAFSA and if I recall correctly, my Pell grant was $300/term. Meanwhile, tuition was $115/credit. My full-time class load was nearly $2,000/term once you included the books.
When I transferred to the state University, tuition was double that and my Pell barely changed.
I was 27 years old when I started college, working at a Subway restaurant for $10/hr, had no savings, and parents that did not give me a dime after I moved out at 21.
I finished my degree with $45K in debt.
The amount you get is based on your financial need amongst other things, so likely your parent could afford some amount of tuition from the govs perspective.
Max for a Pell grant is about $7k/yr atm
Oh, they absolutely could have, but they didn't. Pretty sure the FAFSA even had a line about money coming from others, and I put $0.
And so I get a little salty when my peers talk about being short on money because they're paying for their kids' college.
Whatever, though. I'm making good money now, and I can accurately say that I'm a self-made man.
Think about free education like you think about universal income, except free education is not an experiment with limited data to back up it’s value, but rather a tried and trusted policy with ample data to back up it’s success.
It is also a bit unfortunate that you view education that doesn’t lead directly to a career to be “worthless”. You learn a lot of skills when you get university education, including but not limited to knowledge about the field at hand. If you get education in one field and then go into industry in another area, you will take those skills with you, and the industry at whole will benefit from having a wider skillset among its workers.
For sure there are crafts programs and vocational schools which teach basket weaving, surely you must see the value in maintaining the craft of basket weaving and for there to be skilled basket weavers out there weaving quality baskets, and those interested getting into the industry of weaved basket, there should be an available avenue to learn this skill.