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The federal Pell Grant program provides more than $4 billion to African-American college students each year. Without the Pell Grant program, hundreds of thousands of young blacks would not be able to afford college.
While the Pell Grant program has been enormously successful in leveling the playing field in access to higher education, the number of Pell Grant recipients at the nation's highest-ranked colleges and universities remains low. But the most recent data suggests that progress in increasing the number of low-income students on these campuses is beginning to take place.
EFFORTS TO MAKE college more affordable are of special and urgent concern to African Americans. The reasons are many:
* The median income of black families in the United States is only 62 percent of the median income of white families.
* The typical black family holds only one tenth the wealth of the average white family.
* Blacks are three times as likely as whites to be poor.
* African Americans are twice as often out of work as whites.
* Many families use the equity in their home to finance their children's higher education. But fewer than half of all black families own their home compared to more than three quarters of all white families.
Over the years these huge disparities in income and wealth have been a major factor in the extreme differences between the races in enrollments in higher education.
In an effort to level the playing field for African Americans seeking higher education, the importance of the federal Pell Grant program cannot be overemphasized. This federal grant program for low-income students is the lifeblood for hundreds of thousands of African Americans seeking higher education. Without this important program, many black students would not be able to enroll in higher education. Hundreds of thousands of other blacks would have to go deeper into debt or hold down a job while attending college if it were not for the Pell Grant program.
Since 1976 federal Pell Grants, named after Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell who championed the cause of making college more affordable, have provided money for tens of millions of low-income students. Pell Grants are awarded to undergraduate college students by the federal government based upon calculations of family...