President Barack Obama wants to make sure you can pay for college next year.
His financial stimulus package, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, passed in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday by a vote of 244 to 188.
The $819 billion bill has a variety of measures aimed at bolstering the economy, but a large section is devoted specifically to financing education.
If enacted, the bill will increase the Pell Grant scholarship by $500. This brings the maximum award to $5,350 by next September and to $5,550 for 2010 - the highest amount ever.
Other parts of the proposal include a college tuition tax credit of $2,500 and the creation of new work-study positions for college students.
"We cannot let our whole education system collapse as the economy falters," said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Education and Labor committee, in a press release Wednesday.
Randall Miller, a history professor and political analyst from St. Joseph's University, explained that the bill will help students in "several direct and many indirect ways."
The most direct benefit is making college more affordable for many Americans, he explained.
"What's important is that the government is trying to act progressively to fix the clog in the credit system," he said.
"Penn has a lot of resources, but public institutions are getting hammered and looking at a bleak picture because students can't get loans."
Another direct benefit higher education might see from the bill is further funding for infrastructure repair at educational institutions.
"There will be a nice chunk of change allocated for colleges to renovate their buildings," Miller said.
"Penn is on a rebuilding mania," he continued, "Philadelphia is doing cartwheels over it. If Penn can get in on the money offered by this bill, it could really get going with some more of these large-scale projects."
He stressed that the indirect benefits will be "just as significant - if not more so."
The legislation includes new policies to hold K-12 teachers more accountable, which will result in curriculum changes.
"Certainly within a year or two, we will feel these effects in changes to teacher training and recruitment," Miller added.
While he said it would be hard to predict specifically what the bill will do for Penn, Bill Andresen, associate vice president of federal affairs, noted it is "excellent for higher education in general."
"Besides freeing up money for student loans, we will see significant increases in research dollars, and Penn has traditionally been able to take money from those accounts," he said.
The bill will move on to the Senate on Monday, and, according to Andresen, "will hopefully be on the President's desk by President's Day."
