The Pell Grant program is the nation's largest need-based student grant program, giving out billions of dollars annually.ProPublica wants to blame the universities for not graduating all of their Pell grantees. This is patently unfair, other factors are at work.
I spent my first two years of full-time university teaching in the early 1970s at an urban state campus where students came from the full range of backgrounds - from affluent to barely making it - and most were commuters, that is, not campus residents. It was true then, and apparently today as well, that poor kids faced many challenges on their way to a college degree.
Poor preparation by their tough neighborhood schools, autos that broke down with some frequency, parents/siblings/spouses who got sick or got arrested or lost jobs or cheated or got divorced or stoned or pregnant or ... name your favorite social pathology.
I had students drop out of school to work and support what was left of their family. I had students who couldn't afford a new transmission, and dropped out because they were commuting 80 miles a day by very used auto. Others violated parole and went back to jail. Yet others were so stressed by the circumstances of their chaotic lives they couldn't concentrate on study and simply failed exams.
Most of this craziness the campus can do little about, it is the backdrop against which their lives play out. If fewer make it, I for one am certainly not surprised. Those who do make it are both lucky and focused, characteristics more affluent students need to a lesser degree or not at all.
