Will the recession make college tuition costs go down?

Instead of helping pay exorbitant tuition costs of private schools, why not redirect the funds used for Pell Grants to make state schools better and more affordable?

• Wouldn't students of limited means and the U.S. higher education system in general be better if Pell Grants were redirected toward subsidizing state schools? Isn't that a better investment than supporting the ever increasing tuition demands of private institutions?  Supply & Demand suggests that infusing more money onto the demand side could be one of the reasons prices keep going up. Instead of helping pay exorbitant tuition costs of private schools, why not make state schools better and more affordable? Some state universities are quite good but they've gotten less public funds than they used to and have had to raise tuition and cut back services/quality. It used to be possible for people to work their way through college without taking on a huge debt burden, but that's virtually impossible now. I'm thinking we can make make both public and private schools cheaper this way. Perhaps the federal government can offer states an x% match on every dollar they lower tuition (and not limited to in-state students since it's federal money).

• Answer:

  State governments would likely reduce their support of PostSecondary education even further. Even with a "supplement not supplant" clause the net price would grow over time until federal aid was the primary source of funding for state schools.