18 Billion has how many zeroes?!
(image source: Pell Grant Amount)
Well hello there GBD!
Seeing as how I’ve gotten trigger happy with RSS feeds and have now been inundated with articles and random stuff from all over the world, I thought I’d share some findings with y’all. Some of which I had no idea was going on…and I’m a part of it! (I know, I know: Baaaaad Binks!). Bad indeed.
Not sure how many of you guys live in the U.S. (woot for diversity!), but did you know that the U.S. now needs 18 more billion dollars to come out of thin air? Ya see, college students are in a bit of a rut and we need some mullah to keep going to school, especially since universities increased their tuition (what do you think are some of the reasons tuition hiked up in the first place?).
To get these serious amounts of dough – sadly not the cookie kind – students usually apply for financial aid, grants, and scholarships from anyone who’s willing to give! A big helper is the Pell Grant, a federal college aid that is given to students living in a middle-class household (families earning about $40,000 or less).
This year with the economy being in the tanker, loooots of people are now eligible for the Pell Grant, which means WOO more education! Not only that, but Obama’s stimulus package upped the maximum amount of money a student could get for school. YAY! But…it also means that the government got a heart attack when it heard it now needs to get 18 billion bucks out of somewhere.
Here’s the article from The Huffington Post.
So what ya think about that GBD?
How do you think the government is gonna get the money? I don’t think a lemonade stand will suffice…although those kids selling the cups are kinda cute. What can us mere mortals do to help the situation?
I wanna hear your thoughts! The voices in my head are starting to bore me…wait a minute… O_o
Catarina
December 18, 2009binks, your style rocks and you crack me up. “we need some mullah” fo sho.
one of my biggest pet peeves is the idea that college is supposed to be the best four years of your life, and if you don’t go to the place with the most amenities then your experience won’t be as fulfilling. i just hate this. i think it’s one of the reasons college costs so much– all the schools are competing and they raise tuition costs to pay for all the “extras” or they raise it because they think by being more “elitist/exclusive” they’ll be seen as a better academic institution (and some research has proven that students/parents believe this to be true as well, sadly).
so what do we do to fix this? where do we get more money? geez, i got no clue. i think we need to have a paradigm shift in our thinking– we need a transformation in how we go from belief to action– the idea that education is one of the greatest tools for empowering the citizens (men, women, and children) of any country. and to solve the current economical, social, and environmental crises we are going to need smart, creative individuals who have gone to school and had the kinds of experiences that universities can give. there could be no greater solution to our lack of moolah than this.