Under two successive U.S. presidential administrations spanning 15 years, the Pell Grant program expanded by $19 billion. And yet the net price of higher education — the amount of money students are required to pay to attend college — stands at an all-time high. How could the federal government have spent so much to achieve so little in its efforts to ensure that every qualified student can afford to attend college? Much of the fault lies not within the federal government itself, but in the lack of meaningful support from many state policymakers or institutional leaders.