Declining Power of the Pell Grant

As someone who works at Campus Progress, I've heard many times that the buying power of the Pell grant is far below what it was in the 1970s, when tuition was much lower. Increases to the value of the Pell grant itself have remained little more than stagnant over the years, with increases coming less and less often. This graph from the College Board (pdf) shows the percentage of tuition compared to the price of tuition at public and private institutions since the 1980s.

As you can see, the dent the Pell grant makes on tuition, fees, and room and board over time gets to be significantly less.