Where is all the Pell Grant Money Going?

One of ObamaCo's recent bailout plans, the education bailout, did not initially catch my eye.

As a whore to Academe myself, I have slaved under the yoke of assistantships when burger-flipping would have been a more lucrative (and less stressful) economic venture.  So one would assume that the vast amounts of money already being poured into general and higher education from both government and students, of which I have been a beneficiary, would be more well-known to me, at least.

But the new bailout plan here explains only the additions to the current federal education budget, which are nonetheless blindingly out of proportion.  Take Pell Grants:  "$15.6 billion to increase the maximum Pell Grant by $500, from $4850 to $5350."  Does that math sound funny to you--almost $16 BILLION to increase the maximum grant by only $500?  I tried to reason that the author just mistyped "million" for "billion" (such an easy mistake these days!), but FrugalDad already found the House.gov Appropriations Committee press release, and that's Billion with a Big frickin' B.

I know I'm not the greatest math whiz, but let's break that number down a bit for comparison:

306,505,240 (est. population of the US)

6,782,087,301 (est. population of the world)

$15,600,000,000 (est. addition to Pell Grant system)

At the time of the 2007 Census report on education, almost 18 million people (technically, 17.956mil) were enrolled in college or higher education courses.  If EVERY student enrolled in the US received the $500 increase in award money, the result would look similar to this:

 $500

x   18mil

-------

9000mil (9 billion)

$9 billion dollars would give every student enrolled in college $500 to blow on books, beer, or (gods no!) tuition... so where is the other $6.6 billion going?

Remember that the Pell Grant, according to Ed.gov, supports only "low income undergraduates and certain (read: homeless) postbaccalaureate (sic) students," so technically i'm way too generous thinking that the $500 will be going to all of the enrolled US students.  According to a 2007 Enrollment Status census report (Table 6), only 12.656 million students were enrolled at 2 or 4 year colleges, with 626k being graduate students.  Technical schools and online education apparently aren't up to the government's standards!

So in reality, 12 million students would only need $6 billion to get $500 each--and that's not even how many students actually receive the Pell Grant!  According to the study in Table 6, only 6 million students are unemployed during their college career.  This alone is not an indicator of a low income (I only had to take an undergraduate job when I tried private school--mistake!), but considering that most families in poverty already can't send a son or daughter to college, the majority of students in need are not the ones receiving the largest amounts of financial aid--as this tragically well-researched analysis of income vs. grant award amount shows (.pdf).  The facts are clear--even something so small and simple as an increase to the Pell Grant award is riddled with confusion, corruption, and confiscation.  The benefits are nominal at best, being realistically counterproductive to any solution to the problem of subsidizing education at the national level.

If something so simple and straightforward as an increase to the Pell Grant award amount can be so unbalanced as to be BILLIONS of dollars over what's required for the bill's own stated goals, what ought we to do about the TRILLIONS that are going completely undocumented as back-room deals are struck between huge investment firms like AIG and bureaucrats handpicked from the leadership of other investment firms like Goldman Sachs, the Federal Reserve maintains an open-door policy on forgiving mountains of toxic debt, and Obama shamelessly laments not being able to spend other people's money quickly enough?

It's enough to make a grown man cry... or go libertarian.  It's time to take back the mantle that, for one brief and shining moment, liberals championed:  accountability.  The more libbo bloggers, libbo thinkers, and libbo individuals are calling the pigs on their taxpayer-funded gluttony, the better we will serve our fellow man!  Buy American--but don't buy American B.S.!