“College,” it says, “could cost you nothing.”
The planned marketing slogan is a reference to the most dramatic expansion in more than 50 years of federal grants for education after high school — and the reality that few consumers know they could benefit from the kinds of programs for which hundreds of millions of dollars will be available as soon as this summer.
The lack of awareness is made worse by the fact that many states whose job it is to put the policy into place aren’t yet ready, meaning only a comparatively limited number of consumers will initially be able to use the money for a relatively small number of programs.
“There’s a huge awareness gap with people not understanding what it is, what programs are eligible and how much they can get,” said Devin Purgason, associate vice president of student experience, marketing and outreach at Forsyth Tech in Winston-Salem.
The new policy, known as Workforce Pell, widens the scope of federal Pell Grants by helping lower-income learners pay not just for associate or bachelor’s degrees, but for nondegree job training as short as eight weeks, which was previously not covered, in high-demand fields including nursing, phlebotomy, child care, truck-driving, welding, car repair and HVAC. This at a time when two-thirds of registered voters think a four-year degree is no longer worth the cost.
Passed less than a year ago as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Workforce Pell has had to be set up so quickly that the National Governors Association calls it “one of the most consequential near-term policy challenges” states have faced.
While the provisions formally take effect July 20, states and institutions are allowed to get started as early as July 1. But most are still scrambling to figure out which training programs will satisfy the dozens of pages of eligibility requirements. The governors association has counseled members to approve only a limited number of the highest-quality programs at first.
“I don’t know that this is going to be a ribbon-cutting kind of moment on July 1,” said Autumn Rivera, senior policy specialist for state and federal education and workforce at the National Conference of State Legislatures. “It’s one of those things where the states are trying to wrap their heads around this still.”
One result is that, as significant of a change as Workforce Pell might seem, it is almost certain to start small. As few as several hundred out of the tens of thousands of nondegree programs on the market are likely at the beginning to meet the eligibility criteria — which include the requirements that at least 70 percent of learners successfully graduate and get jobs within six months that pay enough to justify the cost — the U.S. Department of Education has said.
As many as 28,000 may eventually qualify, Nicholas Kent, undersecretary of education, told a conference of education journalists.
More than half of nondegree programs in the trades and in business and about half in health are expected to be covered, but as few as 4 percent will make the cut in “public service and consumer” fields, which include such subjects as early childhood education, retail and culinary fields, fashion and interior design, the department estimates. In one state, North Carolina, a consultant hired to compare all kinds of community college nondegree programs with the requirements of Workforce Pell found that only about 4 percent were eligible.
While more than 4 million students a year take nondegree courses at community colleges alone, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, the Department of Education expects between 184,000 and 188,000 per year to benefit from Workforce Pell. The Congressional Budget Office projects the number will be closer to 100,000. That compares to 7.4 million recipients who get Pell Grants annually for bachelor’s and associate degrees.
Still, payouts averaging about $2,200 each will become available beginning this summer to learners in nondegree programs who previously didn’t have access to federal Pell Grants. These include courses leading to certificates, occupational licenses and certifications.
“It’s a way that learners can really think about, ‘Hey, I can go back and get that critical credential of value to become upwardly mobile,’ ” said Priscilla Camacho, chief legislative, industry and external relations officer at the Alamo Colleges District in San Antonio, Texas.
Like Forsyth Tech, Alamo is gearing up to promote its Workforce Pell-eligible programs — in its case, with a one-minute video that avoids complex insider lingo. “Your fast path to in-demand careers,” it calls them, simply.
“Even though we offer these opportunities for short-term learning, the folks we talk to in focus groups don’t see themselves as students,” said Kristi Wyatt, Alamo’s vice chancellor for strategic communications, marketing and brand experience. “Many of them are working adults with families, and they are looking for the quickest way of upskilling themselves.”
The average age of people traditionally enrolled in nondegree courses is 38, according to research based on data from occupational training in Texas, which makes them harder to find and recruit than, say, students in high schools.
Surveys show that fewer than half of people who could most benefit from these nondegree programs know about them.
Not even college counselors and career advisers are prepared to advise consumers about the kinds of programs covered by Workforce Pell, a survey by the National College Attainment Network found. Fewer than one in 10 said they felt very confident about explaining the programs, while 40 percent said they were not very or not at all confident.
“A lot of these populations don’t know this exists,” said Rivera, of the association of state legislatures. “That’s one of the main concerns our membership has raised.”
There are other hurdles. The legislation left it mostly up to states to determine what fields are in highest demand and which programs meet the requirements, including graduates getting jobs and earning salaries that justify the cost of the training. At least a quarter of states haven’t previously collected this data, research shows.
Where such information is available, it often is divided among different agencies, is incomplete and limited and excludes people who work for themselves or for the government or military, which are not part of the unemployment insurance system commonly used to track employment histories, an analysis by the consulting firm HCM Strategists found.
Without solid reporting about outcomes, advocates fear that the sudden infusion of federal cash could lead to the deceptive recruiting tactics and other risks to consumers that have historically characterized some nondegree programs.
In the past, “short-term programs were attractive to abusive colleges because they could churn a lot of students through in a short amount of time,” said James Kvaal, undersecretary of education during the Biden administration and now vice president of the National Program at the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
Navigating the huge number of credential programs of all kinds has only gotten harder. There are nearly 1.9 million such programs offered in the United States, by 134,491 providers, including both degree and nondegree, according to the nonprofit Counting Credentials project.
Returns vary widely. One study by researchers at the University of Michigan and the Strada Education Foundation found that graduates from nondegree programs at community colleges in Texas earned about 4 percent more, two years after finishing, than they made before enrolling. But the increase for those trained in transportation and engineering technologies was two to four times higher, while learners who studied business, marketing, information sciences, communication and design saw essentially no gain at all.
A separate study of 23,000 nondegree credentials by the American Enterprise Institute and the Burning Glass Institute found that slightly more than one in 10 resulted in a 10 percent or higher increase in pay.
Still, there is pushback from providers — many of them for-profit schools — that teach programs almost sure to be disqualified from Workforce Pell. Eighty-three percent of the objections to it during a comment period were in defense of schools that teach those subjects, an analysis by higher education consultant Phil Hill and Associates found. Nearly 93 percent of cosmetology programs won’t meet the requirements, for example, Hill has calculated.
Those with programs that likely will qualify, meanwhile, said they are eager to get started.
“The opportunity is going to be great,” said Purgason, at Forsyth Tech. “I just think we’re going to be very slow at this.”
Jon Marcus wrote this article for The Hechinger Report. Support for this reporting was provided by Lumina Foundation.