President George W. Bush’s plan to increase the maximum Pell Grant award is a welcome, if only symbolic, nod to the higher education community. Increasing the aid ceiling by $500 over the next five years, as the president’s budget will propose, is a worthy gesture for the 5 million low-income students who receive the grant each year, but it is one marked by much cause for concern.

Perhaps most discouraging, the president failed to live up to a campaign promise to raise the maximum Pell Grant to $5,100 in his first term. Instead, the top award has remained at $4,050 for three years, even as college costs swell. While Bush’s recent proposal expounds a more modest goal of $4,550, it also endeavors to close a $4.3 billion gap in the program by adjusting student loan tables. The vagaries of this proposal have left Democrats skeptical and raise the all-too-familiar specter of congressional underfunding.

Even if Congress passes the aid hike, fewer students will receive the award due to late-2004 changes to the financial aid formula that restrict eligibility. Using new tax data to calculate awards may shore up money to cover the program’s shortfall — which supporters argue will allow for future maximum-grant increases — but it does so at the expense of thousands of students already counting on aid.

Similarly, increasing the maximum Pell Grant award by so small an amount is a problematic Band-Aid for an affliction best described as internal bleeding.