By The Editors
Some educational and political observers readily ascribe President Obama’s proposals unveiled Friday to restrain the increasing costs of college-going for students and their families while compelling colleges to improve the “value” of their curricular offerings as more symbolic than substantive – as political theater meant for the campaign trail.
That’s because the President’s complex, proposed changes, which have been greeted with a distinct nervousness in the higher education community, would have to be approved by Congress — something which especially has no chance of happening in a presidential election year.
But the discussion has brought renewed attention to the changes Congress recently imposed on the Pell Grant program for low-income college students, a mainstay of the federal aid to higher education universe since 1976