As the push to extend Pell Grant eligibility to include quality short-term education training programs continues, some community college leaders say Exhibit A for federal legislators considering Workforce Pell legislation should be how much state community college systems have already accomplished with existing but limited state-funded, short-term vocational programs and related scholarship programs.
Those efforts offer a foundation upon which Workforce Pell could build and further expand and demonstrate that Workforce Pell would merely recognize the reality that much dynamic growth in higher education is occurring in short-term vocational education, they say.
North Carolina, for example, has a robust short-term training program, with more than 145,000 students taking at least one short-term training course in 2023-24, says North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) President Jeff Cox. Many of those courses are vocational courses, and a subset of those prepare students to earn industry-recognized credentials or state occupational licenses.
Since North Carolina’s State Board of Community Colleges instituted a Short-term Workforce Development Grant Program in 2021, more than 7,000 students have received scholarships for training toward industry-recognized credentials or occupational licenses in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 years. That has mirrored substantial state funding for community college students that led to the disbursement of more than $4 million in aid over the two-year period. Instructional full-time equivalent in workforce continuing education increased by 9% in 2023-24, according to the system.
A fiscal 2023-24 report on the grant program by NCCCS highlights its positive impact: “Students who might not otherwise have afforded educational and training programs were offered financial assistance for the first time. Beyond access, more students were given a valuable opportunity to gain new skills, improve their earning potential, and gain access to better career opportunities.”
The program continues to evolve and move toward more targeted funding, Cox says.
“We’re asking our legislature to consider funding those programs that lead to high demand, high wage at a higher level than what the other programs are, and including the short-term credential programs,” Cox says. “So if you can come in and take a short-term credential program and get into a career path where you can make a good living, then we’re asking our state to think about funding those differently.”
Focused funding
A continuing concern raised by critics of the Workforce Pell legislation is whether funding will be inappropriately allocated. Like many other state programs, however, NCCCS and state law target limited state dollars toward areas of greatest demand, with eligible programs determined in collaboration with North Carolina’s Department of Commerce to align them with high-demand occupations in the state. These occupation fields include architecture, health sciences, information technology, electrical line worker training and manufacturing.
Cox says even more could be done with Workforce Pell, which is sometimes referred to as short-term Pell.
“Short-term Pell is really important because it aligns well with our new funding model, which is trying to recognize and encourage folks to enroll in programs that lead to some sort of a living wage,” Cox says. “We have about 40% of our state’s high school students who aren’t going anywhere or pursuing any kind of postsecondary degree or credential. For me, that’s the target audience for these short-term programs.”
To get a rough estimate of the number of students who may be eligible for Workforce Pell, Cox applied the percentage of all CE course sections that already meet Workforce Pell policy eligibility (in terms of course hours and weeks) to the total number of NCCCS CE students served in fall 2023.
“This gives us a conservative estimate of 6,200 students who would benefit upon initial implementation,” Cox says.
The legislative landscape
A number of federal legislative bills would institute Workforce Pell. For example, the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act (H.R. 6585), introduced in December 2023 with bipartisan support, would extend Pell Grant eligibility from the current minimum requirement of 600 clock hours and 15 weeks in length down to 150 clock hours and eight weeks.
Under the bill, state workforce boards would have the initial responsibility to approve individual Workforce Pell programs by ensuring that they are aligned with requirements of targeted occupations and with state licensure or certificate requirements. Accreditors would also review the programs. The U.S. Education Department would determine whether programs have adequate completion and job placement rates, do not overcharge students and yield sufficient earnings.
The Workforce Pell bills have stalled in Congress. In June, an attempt to attach a Workforce Pell bill amendment to a major national security and military bill, an oft-tried strategy of tying a bill to must-pass larger legislation, failed.
Monty Sullivan, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System (LCTCS), who testified in 2023 at a U.S. House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing on Workforce Pell, says failure to pass the measure since then reflects “more where we are politically right now than a reflection of the merits of this proposal.”
What changed in Louisiana
As with North Carolina, Louisiana’s community colleges have developed robust short-term vocational education programs, to the point where the number of students in short-term vocational education now rivals those in longer-term degree programs, Sullivan says.
He adds that from fiscal years 2012 to 2024, the Louisiana system went from about 12,500 graduates annually to 35,000 graduates, including 15,000 who received short-term, non-credit workforce training credentials that are related to fields in Louisiana that are economic drivers.
“What happened, beginning in about 2012, extending through 2020, and really into the Covid time frame, was this explosion in employers coming to us asking for more of a skills-based training effort so that those employers understood exactly what an employee knew when they walked onto the shop floor or into the plant or other place of employment,” Sullivan says. “Also in that time frame, we saw the development in construction as an example of the National Center for Construction Education and Research, where they were able to build industry-based certifications around specific skill sets, so that both educators and employers knew exactly what it was that they were getting. I think we will look back historically on this period and recognize the growth and the development of an entire sector within the community college sector that wasn’t fully grown back in the 2012 time frame.”
Even for students receiving associate degrees, many now are also receiving short-term vocational certificates, such as a cybersecurity certificate for a student with an overall computer science associate degree, Sullivan says. Informal, anecdotal conversations with students and employers suggests that the certificates are more influential in getting students hired than the associate degrees, “because that’s what differentiates the student from the rest of the market,” Sullivan says.
Leveraging Covid funds
In Colorado, Gov. Jared Polis and legislative leadership have turned to the Colorado Community College System (CCCS) to address critical workforce shortages in healthcare, notes Mordecai Brownlee, president of Community College of Aurora (CCA). Through state legislation, $26 million in state recovery dollars from the Covid-related American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) were allocated to CCCS to create Care Forward Colorado. The program offered zero-cost training for short-term allied health programs, which typically do not qualify for federal financial aid such as Pell grants, until the funding ran out.
Since its launch, Care Forward has resulted in 9,423 healthcare credentials being awarded, focusing on high-demand healthcare roles such as nursing aides, EMTs, paramedics and medical assistants. That includes more than 1,800 certified nursing aides, more than 2,500 EMTs and paramedics, and more than 1,100 medical assistants.
Early job placement data are also promising, showing that more than 90% of Care Forward participants are now employed in healthcare across Colorado, addressing urgent workforce needs in local communities, Brownlee says.
From 2022 through 2024, CCA has had 152 students graduate from a short-term vocational program using state funds to support student success, Brownlee says. Total students impacted by CCA high-priority short-term programs is currently 230 per year.
With Care Forward funding no longer available, the success of the program highlights the urgent need for federal support through Workforce Pell grants, Brownlee says.
“Granting short-term Pell funding is crucial for empowering our community’s future,” Brownlee says. “By supporting high-priority programs, we can equip more students with the essential skills needed to enter the workforce and contribute to Colorado’s economy.”
Some Colorado short-term training efforts persist despite the sunsetting of ARPA funds. In 2022, CCA launched an expanded program and facilities partnership with the BuildStrong Academy, a nonprofit that trains new construction workers, including development of a new 55,000-square-foot facility that serves as the headquarters of the BuildStrong Academy within the greater metro Denver area, Brownlee notes.
Expanding opportunity
Stringing together enough funding to provide short-term programs is challenging in Texas, as well.
“Much like our colleagues in Louisiana and other places around the country, we are having to try to put together this patchwork quilt of remedies to provide short-term vocational opportunities for students,” says Dallas College Chancellor Justin Lonon.
For the 2023-2024 academic year, Dallas College awarded 13,508 degrees and certificates with more than 5,286 workforce certificates, Lonon says. This included 1,255 students who earned a workforce credential that were potentially eligible for state support through a Texas Public Education Grant (TPEG), pending application and approval.
“Texas public education grants cover some of the tuition and the learning materials but are not sufficient to fully fund programs and to build short-term vocational programs at scale,” an important consideration given Dallas College has 130,000 students, Lonon says.
While Dallas College serves 30,000 dual-credit, early college/high school students, serving older students with short-term programs is more challenging, he says.
“The adult working-age population doesn’t necessarily have time to get off the hamster wheel of life, so we have been very creative trying to implement new short-term programs to speak to students where they are and what they’re doing,” Lonon says. “Short-term Pell would allow us to remove some of the financial barriers for them to pop in and out of the workforce to take advantage of education.”
There are positive state steps by the Texas legislature, Lonon says. In 2023, enactment of Texas House Bill Eight changed the funding community college funding model by replacing a static funding model based on the number of courses and credit hours offered to a dynamic, performance-based model and invested about $687 million into the community college formula, Lonon says, noting funding is focused on outcomes and, within that model, on in-demand, short-term, non-credential programs, Lonon says.
“Under House Bill Eight, as we’re modeling out that, we’re going to grow and increase short-term credential production and credential programs,” he says.
Such performance-based funding models naturally favor short-term vocational education in securing state funding dollars, given the strong outcome data those programs can bring to bear to compete for limited dollars, Lonon and others note.
