Pell Grants have become a sacred cow in American politics, owing to the perception that they’re necessary to enable low-income students to go to college for the training and intellectual stimulation they (and the country) need. Like all sacred cows, however, Pell Grants don’t look so lovely when you take a close, unemotional look. The Pope Center’s latest paper, written by Jenna Ashley Robinson and Duke Cheston, gives Pell Grants precisely that. They find that the program is very wasteful and argue that it should be changed to cover only low-income students who are demonstrably prepared for college studies. In this week’s Clarion Call, Duke Cheston discusses the main findings of the paper and links to it.