pell

The left would like you to believe the DOE is some kind of federal schooling system when in fact all it really does is issue pell grants.

The only government subsidies that are worth anything are Pell grants and they phase out well below 150k.

The $5500 is per semester, so the total yearly tuition is about 2x what the Pell grant pays.

Some kind of assistance is available to most people--the Pell Grant is income based and many states have Scholarships.

Community college is already very cheap, and Pell grants often completely cover the cost if you are low income.

Anyway, the students' expense is not zero, there are never enough Pell grants to go around.

Probably not a coincidence, at all, that $5500 is just under the Pell grant amount.

So that's $52k/yr to $64k/yr before you start adding in stuff like Pell grants.

Dave Pell is really influential among people who read hn imho, so yes NextDraft network effect could have played a role here.

How much do you think community college costs these days after a Pell Grant?

I also benefitted from Pell grants and a first time home buyer grant with my girlfriend.

I will say that I meant quite a few people abusing the Pell grants though.

Vox’s Libby Nelson wrote, “Community college tuition for poorer students is often entirely covered by the need-based Pell Grant.” So making it free takes care of people who couldn't handle the paperwork of filing for a Pell Grant.

A low-income student who is eligible for a maximum Pell Grant of $5,730 would not receive assistance under the Tennessee program, because that amount would already cover tuition." So in short, need more details but this just doesn't add up.

Vox’s Libby Nelson wrote, “Community college tuition for poorer students is often entirely covered by the need-based Pell Grant.” It may be true that tuition is free for some, but to say it is often or on average probably depends upon a strange definition of the word.

You're writing about funding at the federal level (Pell grants, DOE, NSF, etc.) but traditionally the most important component of public higher education was state university systems.