The administration’s recent cuts to federal financial aid for higher education send a clear message to students: When it comes to paying for college, don’t count on Pell Grants.

College students know better than anyone how important Pell Grants can be when it comes to paying for college — Pell is the cornerstone of financial aid in this country. But now these new cuts, coupled with the failure to raise Pell Grant award levels to keep up with rising college costs and inflation, are slowly but surely pulling the rug out from under students struggling to afford a college degree.

The president talked in his State of the Union address about increasing the size of Pell Grants, but he didn’t talk about the number of students who will lose some or all of their Pell funding because of his administration’s cuts. The University of Wisconsin System predicts as many as 5,500 Wisconsin Pell recipients may lose their grants entirely, while thousands more will see their amount of Pell aid reduced. And the cuts don’t stop there. The changes will have a ripple effect through other financial-aid programs. According to the GAO, many students who receive work study, Perkins Loans and state grants will see cuts as well.

While we need to be fiscally responsible, we also need to do more to help students facing record-high tuition costs. I have been proud to support a number of increases to Pell over the years, but I also know that those changes aren’t enough — we can’t say that we have equal access to higher education in this country until Pell Grants start to catch up with the cost of getting a college degree.

To give the Pell Grant program the support it deserves, I have joined Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine to introduce a resolution that calls on the Senate to increase the maximum Pell Grant award to $9,000 per student by 2011.

I also have joined bipartisan efforts calling on the administration to reverse its rollback of this grant program. Some of this pressure seems to be paying off — the budget the administration released in February proposes a modest increase to the Pell maximum award amount (currently $4,050) and an elimination of the program’s current shortfall. But the budget does nothing to stop the rollback that will take Pell money from students and families already struggling with the cost of college.

The choice is simple: Do we make substantial increases to Pell Grants in order to support middle- and low-income students’ access to higher education? Or do we tell those trying to achieve their dream of a college education that they are on their own? Without a strong Pell Grant program, we put a college degree within reach only for those who can pay their own way, and that’s a mistake that we can’t afford to make.

Russ Feingold is a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin.