<p>AP</a> Source: Obama to seek changes in Pell Grants - Yahoo! News</p>
<p>Please excuse my poor reading comprehension skills; Am I reading this correctly? So he’s saying he wants to cut the Pell Grant budget, but put money to “education and innovation”? What a load of BS. </p>
<p>So when it says, “President Barack Obama’s budget plan would cut $100 billion from Pell Grants and other higher education programs over a decade through belt-tightening and use the savings to keep the maximum college financial aid award at $5,550,”
does it mean the maximum Pell grant award would become $5,500 or the maximum grant aid would become $5,500? Because the latter would be quite scary.</p>
<p>Too bad, so sad.</p>
<p>Time for ya’ll to take out loans like the rest of us folks. No more free ride.</p>
<p>^^ your free ride comes from your parents.</p>
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<p>And you don’t know what you’re talking about. My parents don’t have the money to afford my education. They may be signers/cosigners on the loans, but they don’t make the payments. </p>
<p>The Cal grant/pell grant should be eliminated. If I can pay for my own education by working, then all of you can too.</p>
<p>I like the fact that you think 1) work is easy to find and 2) people with pell grants don’t seemingly have to take loans.</p>
<p>Pell grants are a horrible idea. Most of the people who receive them go to schools like University of Pheonix, which is not that impressive. </p>
<p>Also, don’t hate on our parents who saved money for our college education instead of spending it and hoping for the government to bail them out of their short sightedness.</p>
<p>Problem with America: Stop expecting people to give you free money and start working. Its not tough to find work, you just have too high standards.</p>
<p>LMAO @ children being responsible for who their parents are.</p>
<p>brb, paying 60k in loans with a min wage job.</p>
<p>I work 2 jobs during the semester and if I can pay for my living expense, I figure so can most of the people who try. 60k is over 4 years, it’s only about 15k a year. Most jobs are around 10-20/hr. And if you work 20-30 hrs a week, you can earn a decent amount. Most internship pay about 20-40/hr with overtime… so during summer, you earn even more.</p>
<p>I don’t see how this relates to who my parents are, other than they taught me how to work hard.</p>
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<p>And where did I say that? </p>
<p>Does it need to be easy? Are you not going to do something if it’s not easy? Give me a break. Life ain’t easy, son. Get used to it.</p>
<p>The amount that it costs to attend school full-time and the living expenses alone would require you to work 50+ hours at a decent paying job. Who has the time or will to be able to do something like that?</p>
<p>Me. But regardless, the grants help alleviate some of the financial burden.</p>
<p>Don’t hate on us because our parents were smart enough and lazy enough to feed off of the hard working people. Also for teaching us that there is free money to be had, and we didn’t have to work a second for it. Tell your folks Thanks!</p>
<p>I learned about all the free money from the question mark guy infomercials. It’s FREEEEEEEEEE!</p>
<p>I mean seriously, they pay me to go to school. I don’t understand why people who have to pay even go. I could do much better things with 60k.</p>
<p>you guys are pretty much being robbed</p>
<p>lol lonesoui. </p>
<p>if u guys really want to get upset, read paris hilton’s book.</p>
<p>If I had to pay 60k to go to school, I’d put that money on a house (which these days you can buy for 60k in some parts of the country) and start charging rent! Much smarter than paying for college (I’m in on scholarship). If they cut my money off, I’m off to play sports to pay for school. No way they’re cutting football scholarships and no way I’m PAYING for school. It’s the biggest scam in America.</p>
<p>And ■■■■■ @ the question mark guy, HAHAHA!</p>
<p>So you’re saying that you are entitled to a free education that everyone else has to pay for? </p>
<p>So while some middle class kids are working 2-3 jobs to support themselves, you deserve to have free education because you are just so special. To me, it seems like Financial Aid is one of, in your words, “the biggest scams in America”.</p>
<p>I am willing to work for my education. I’m willing to pay the cost to learn something new everyday. And to see people who take a portion of my tuition to pay out the aid for people who don’t even care is just sickening. </p>
<p>If anything, increase loans and work study. I think work study should be emphasized over pure aid. People just work for what they get.</p>
<p>If you study history the University of California did not even have a tuition. As a matter of fact we still don’t have a tuition. Instead they bill you under fees, because it was built as a tuition free place of learning. So everyone else didn’t pay for it until relatively recently. </p>
<p>Middle class kids didn’t have to work in high school to pay rent (often under the table because I needed more hours), did they? Regardless, I’m not so special, I’m saying school isn’t worth the price of admission. If they cut my money off today, I’d go out and work. Have you seen the numbers? Even Harvard grads are having a hard time finding a job. Why pay for something that isn’t guaranteed to pay back? And I seriously doubt anyone at Berkeley is working 2-3 jobs and going to school full time. If they are, that’s their choice. And like I said, I don’t get financial aid in the grant sense. I get a scholarship based on my grades. I made too much money to qualify for grants.</p>
<p>You got a scholarship for grades considering that you “had an F and a couple of Ws”, missed the application deadline, and had a 3.7 from a CCC? Unless you are a minority, I’m wondering what kind of scholarship you have.</p>
<p>I don’t need to see “numbers” about how much college is worth. I can see by the internship offers I have gotten as well as the FT recruiting done by my friends. The jobs I work I put on my resume and give me an edge over other applications I guess. So it all works out, I guess. (I’m working like 10hrs/job, so it’s not actually that much… about 20hrs/week) It’s true school work is a lot tighter and sometimes I can’t attend some of the events I want to, but I don’t find it a loss of a college experience at all.</p>
<p>I know for the jobs that I’m recruiting for and the offers that I’ve received, I would have no chance at them without a degree. Without a degree, I would be earning 40,000 max right now with little room for improvement. However, on a career track, I will probably start out around 60k-100k and progress to 80k-120k in 2 years. I’m not sure how it doesn’t make financial sense to invest in myself.</p>
<p>And your situation is shows clearly what is wrong with the system. If a high school/CCC student can make enough to not qualify for grants, why can’t everyone else? Why does such a huge cut of people tuition’s fees go towards paying for those who don’t care enough to help themselves? I say, just cut tuition or improve the programs/add more classes instead of giving out grants. Provide more work study instead of strict FA.</p>
<p>I see people around campus talking about how they want to use their FA money on clothes and shopping. This completely disgust me that my money is being used this way. </p>
<p>I’m not saying higher education is cheap or anything. I’m saying UC Berkeley is giving in-state residents a good deal right now. And while it was free before, California simply doesn’t have the budget to pay for it right now. And I would much prefer high education being cut than K-12.</p>
<p>Ah, see you only know half the story. My F was negated by academic renewal and I also took the class over again. Turns out half the class failed when the teacher assigned a bunch of work and then decided that only the extra credit would count towards our grade. Welcome to CCC life 2003. Apparently, you read my story wrong. I turned in my application on time when I applied. However, I did not apply to CAL during the application process and if you can read my story again you’ll find out why (But you already did that and managed to misconstrue it already). As for my race? I’m mixed, but as a minority I get no breaks because I made too much money WORKING. My scholarship is open to all races. As for the Ws, they were due to 2 car accidents which took me out of school for 6 months each time due to the severity of the accidents. On another occasion I took an IP and had to complete the class about 8 months later, but it was done.</p>
<p>Well, I don’t know your particular major so I can’t say if it is worth going to college or not. However, most aren’t. I say this having worked in corporate america for 3 years myself. I made the same money as a person with a masters. They laughed at me going back to school and asked why I bothered. I told them I didn’t like having something unfinished on my record.</p>
<p>Without a degree you would be making only 40k max working for someone else (which isn’t true, my hometown workers make over 100k), but you could open your own business where the sky is the limit. However, college doesn’t teach people that. They teach people to be great workers for others. As for myself, I don’t like having unfinished business and school allows me to do other things while taking classes. Again, if I had to pay for it myself, I’d question staying because I’d wonder if the loans/lost time in the workforce is worth the cost of going. As of right now, it works fine for my goals. However, I do know that school is a scam. At least undergrad is, grad school is different. Example: I got in from a CCC and will graduate with a BA from Berkeley the same as you. Yet, if you came here straight from high school, you probably paid an exorbitant amount of money more than I did for the same degree. Isn’t this a rip off to you? I would feel that way.</p>
<p>Another thing, you don’t want students to get financial aid, yet you yourself receive aid in the form of cheap tuition. If you want to pay the real price of school, why don’t you go private and see how easy it would be to pay. Think about it. As a worker, people’s tax money went to subsidize your education so you could get better jobs than those that work and yet have less education than you. Yet you want those same people to not have a subsidized education? (BTW, only in some cases as obviously some people get better jobs w/out schooling).</p>
<p>And for the record my parents died years ago and my family has been trying to stop me from going to school for the last 5 years, so I’ve been doing this on my on my own and honestly I’m surprised to be here just as much as you are reading this, but I made it:)</p>
<p>How is my situation what is wrong with the system? I made enough money when I was working full time to not pay for grants, but I made $20k that’s right only $20k for the year. How am I living? Luckily, somehow i am making it. As an independent student I get judged differently from others.</p>
<p>IMO, since many here don’t work, it’s an uneven playing field to have others work. Also, I’m sick of the people who can’t help themselves argument even though I agree in principle. If guy A has parents that can’t afford to send him here, but guy B’s parents were highly educated and had him on a success track since middle school, how fair is it that guy A gets punished (not intentionally of course) by having to figure everything out on his own while working and somehow finding the same resources as guy B. I know plenty of non-minorities getting FA and I think its fine. Again, until you pay private school tuition I’d hardly make the case that you are paying your fair share as your tuition is subsidized like it or not.</p>
<p>When I first went to college in 2002, I used my money to buy a used car ($300), while everyone else blew their money on frivolous things such as those that you mentioned. I say let them. They’ll learn, trust me they’ll learn as my friends did that now have enormous debt despite getting tax refunds over 10k a year.</p>
<p>California doesn’t even pay for FA right now outside of Cal Grants (which most students don’t receive). Pell grants are federal money. Which is what this thread is about. How does California’s budget affect pell money?</p>
<p>Good luck to you in your job search.</p>