If I'm doing the math right, my sibs and I were the first (out of like 50 or 70 so in our generation) to attend and graduate 4-year colleges.  Thanks in large part to Pell, my dad was able to put 4 kids (3 at the same time), through 4 year private colleges.  On a union steelworker's wages.

We need to re-cast the balance of financial aid for students away from loans, and back to grants.  Pell Grants.  And we need to stop both enriching the loan companies (and the occasional corrupt financial aid officer who steers students into loans and gets kickbacks) and leaving new graduates no option but corporate droid-dom, so as to pay off those loans.

It needs also be noted and remembered that Pell -and his father - were largely responsible for bringing the Holocaust and Nazi atrocities to light at the end and after WWII.  

The loans, called National Defense because it was thought that an educated citizenry was critical for the country, were granted and administered by the federal government. Hillary Clinton referred to them often during the primary because she paid for law school with these loans. And her interest rate was 2%.

Perhaps what is needed with any educational grant is education about the grant intent -- some basic arithmetic about the percentage of taxes that supported public universities in past and the serious subtraction in that support since . . . or we will not continue to be fruitful as a society and multiply opportunity, as Senator Pell intended.

Watch for the reports on declining enrollments due to this economy, folks -- we're seeing such severe drops now, even in private institutions and especially in public ones.  And the students who can't afford to come back to college are the poor.  So we will be paying for them in other ways for a generation to come.