By Lisa Burnam
Part of my undergrad was spent at Howard University, standing in Financial Aid lines that snaked the halls of the Administrative building, often out the entrance doors. I saw futures derailed in that place: Hours of standing and sitting with all your need-validating documents in a folder, clutched to your bosom, just to find out you didn’t complete one form and had to come back the next day to do it all over again. No cell or smart phones. You had one shot to get it right. If you succeeded, you earned a “validation sticker” that was stuck on the back of your student ID. It was your warrior mark. You made it – and it was worth more than gold. In 2000, Howard tuition, before factoring in housing, was close to $10,000. To me, that was a fortune.
Twenty-five years later, roughly 40 percent of all college students — more than 6 million Americans — still rely on Pell Grants. The average grant amount is $4,511. Meanwhile, the average tuition cost for one year hovers around $14,688. Fifty years ago, when the program launched, Pell Grants covered nearly 80 percent of the total cost of attending a four-year public college. Today they cover less than 30 percent — a collapse driven by skyrocketing tuition costs, ever-increasing cost-of-living, and insufficient federal investment that has effectively gutted the program’s original promise.
Yet even in their diminished state, Pell Grants remain essential for low-income students — particularly Black and Brown students, first-generation college students, and undergraduate parents — to access higher education at all. More than half of recipients come from families earning less than $20,000 a year. These working-class students are left to navigate a system that claims to value educational opportunity while systematically defunding the very mechanisms that make it possible.
On July 1, 2026, new restrictions will deny Pell Grants to students who earn scholarships or come from families with small farms or businesses, even if they still can’t afford college. The same law eliminates income-driven loan repayment plans, forcing typical graduates to pay nearly $3,000 more annually.
These changes stem from the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ (OBBB) that Republicans passed last July — the same legislation that slashed Medicaid, SNAP, and other lifeline programs is cutting $330 billion in higher education spending in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires. Working-class students are simply the latest target in a systematic dismantling of the social safety net. Cuts to these programs mean millions of college students lose health coverage and food subsidies.
But there’s more. Trump’s OBBB also eliminates the 20-year-old Grad PLUS loan program for new borrowers, which will force more than 425,000 students to take out private loans. We can imagine the interest rates for debt-laden graduates with middling credit scores. Banks will love this. Student loan relief for defrauded borrowers will also be nixed. It makes one wonder if this policy stems from lingering resentment over the $25 million Trump University settlement?
The answer may lie in what the OBBB expands rather than cuts. Starting July 1, 2026, Pell Grants will be available to very short-term programs — as brief as eight weeks — with zero accountability measures. No data-reporting requirements. No quality standards. No oversight to prevent fraud. In other words: Cut aid to students attending legitimate colleges, then open the vault for the exact type of predatory operation Trump himself ran. This isn’t reform. It’s a heist disguised as workforce development.
These changes will devastate low-income communities of color, where higher education remains the primary pathway out of poverty. Graduate programs in public service fields — teaching, social work, nursing — will see enrollment collapse as students are forced into unaffordable private loans with no path to forgiveness.
This is exploitation masquerading as budget policy and won’t make America a better place to live for the majority of Americans. The OBBB represents a deliberate choice to convert one of this country’s most successful economic mobility vehicles into a profit-extraction scheme for predatory institutions – while ensuring the students who need help the most cannot access it. The elites who benefited from affordable higher education aren’t just pulling up the ladder; they’re adding spikes so anyone who tries to climb will bleed on the way up — if they can suffer long enough to get there at all.
—
Previously Published on cepr.net with Creative Commons License
***
Join The Good Men Project as a Premium Member today.
All Premium Members get to view The Good Men Project with NO ADS. More information here.
◊♦◊
Have you read the original anthology that was the catalyst for The Good Men Project? Buy here: The Good Men Project: Real Stories from the Front Lines of Modern Manhood
—
Photo credit: unsplash
