Claiborne Pell died yesterday

You may not know who Claiborne Pell is right away, until you remember the Pell Grant. Passed in 1965, the Pell Grant has helped over 54 million Americans attend college. He was also part of the conference that drafted the founding charter of the UN, was the main sponsor behind the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts. Even though he was a multimillionaire, Pell ranked the Pell Grant program as his single greatest achievement.

Some things about Pell I found really interesting:

• Pell’s definition of his Senate job: Translate ideas into actions and help people.
• Quote: “I always try to let the other fellow have my way.”
• From Projo.com: “He was such a terrible driver that he drove for years in a white Mustang that was fitted with a roll-bar. That feature — plus the array of body dents and the pelican hood ornament he had borrowed from his family crest — always distinguished Pell’s car from the somber sedans at the foot of the Capitol steps.”
• Pell’s rules of campaigning: Don’t attack the other fellow. Keep a sense of humor. Do the unexpected.

In other news, a “biennial study by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, which evaluates how well higher education is serving the public, handed out F’s for affordability to 49 states, up from 43 two years ago. Only California received a passing grade in the category, a C, thanks to its relatively inexpensive community colleges.” “Only two states — New York and Tennessee — have made even minimal improvements since 2000, but they’re still considered to be failing. Everywhere else, families must fork over a greater percentage of their income to pay for college. In Illinois, the average cost of attending a public four-year college has jumped from 19 percent of a family’s income in 1999-2000 to 35 percent in 2007-2008, and in Pennsylvania, from 29 percent to 41 percent.”