Community and technical colleges are starting to prepare to implement what many of them have long advocated for: Pell Grant funding for students pursuing short-term workforce training programs, otherwise known as Workforce Pell, allowed for the first time by the federal funding bill signed into law in July.
Many community college workforce development education leaders have expressed excitement about the promise of Workforce Pell, while also observing the numerous unknowns, including the U.S. Education Department’s (ED) anticipated rules to govern the program and required state oversight efforts. Still, they say that Workforce Pell could have a large positive impact for their students.
“[Workforce Pell] will increase access and increase resources for programs for which many learners never had this sort of opportunity before,” says Ian Roark, provost, acting executive vice chancellor of academic affairs, and vice chancellor of workforce development and innovation at Pima Community College (Pima) in Tucson, Arizona. “At Pima, it’s going to allow us to offer federal financial aid to a number of programs that we have not really had the opportunity to do so before.”
Workforce Pell also could allow right-sizing programs and avoiding current distortions made by the incentive for community colleges to extend programs to ensure they are Pell-eligible, Roark says.
“I think this is a big development from the student perspective,” says Marie Bruin, director of workforce education at the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC).
She says Workforce Pell addresses the two things consumers are deeply concerned about — if they can participate in short-term programs that may help them advance in their career that are directly related to what employers seek and, secondly, to do so without taking out loans.
At Spokane Colleges in Washington, of full-time students, a high percentage of Pell-eligible students, 89.3%, receive Pell grants, while less than 31% of part-time, credit program students receive the grant, notes Julie Parks, vice president of workforce development at Spokane Colleges. She adds that Workforce Pell could help adult learners with unsuccessful prior higher education experiences to try higher education again and perhaps incentivize them to complete longer programs down the road.
Provisions of the law
Signed into law by President Donald Trump on July 4, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB) would start Workforce Pell on July 1, 2026, for the 2026-27 academic year. However, a short window to review and approve proposed regulations for the program could push the date by a year.
Under the new law, Workforce Pell will lower the minimum required hours of instruction for program eligibility from 600 to 150 hours and the duration of instruction from 15 weeks to eight weeks but will also prorate aid available to students based on the number of clock hours, credits or weeks. Workforce Pell programs will have to meet additional requirements.
“In order to be eligible for Workforce Pell, programs will have to meet both federal and state standards,” says Jennifer Stiddard, senior director for government affairs at Jobs for the Future (JFF). “The federal role will be looking at earnings, completion and placement rates, while the states will be assessing whether a program is in-demand, meets the needs of employers and can articulate and stack to other nondegree credentials or degree programs.”
Students who have obtained a baccalaureate (but not a graduate credential) would be eligible for Workforce Pell, according to a JFF analysis.
Programs that will get a boost
Initial programmatic beneficiaries of Workforce Pell may include existing short-term workforce training programs of eight to 15 weeks that could be eligible with some adjustment, according to officials.
“Here at Pima, we have four programs right off the bat that we will be working to ensure are aligned to all of the regulations and directives from the Department of Ed,” Roark says, noting they include phlebotomy, emergency medical technicians, truck driver training and certified nursing aid programs. All are less than 16 credits and thus currently not Pell eligible.
A critical question for many is whether non-credit workforce training offerings will be eligible, a key detail not expressly addressed in the statute.
“Our number one issue is whether Workforce Pell can be used for those non-credit programs because those non-credit programs are very employer-responsive and are ones that we can put up pretty quickly with an employer as a partner, have success, and modify quickly if we need to,” Spokane’s Parks says.
There is also a strong equity component to Workforce Pell, says Ne’Keisha Stepney, assistant provost of workforce development at Waubonsee Community College in Illinois.
“The low-income, first-generation and working adult students served through the Pell program are often the ones for whom these quick but workforce-ready certificates can have the greatest impact,” Stepney says.
A fortunate test run experience
Some institutions’ implementation adjustments may benefit from participation in ED’s experimental sites, such as at Mott Community College (MCC) in Flint, Michigan, which participated in an ED Workforce Pell trial roughly 10 years ago, says Robert Matthews, MCC vice president for student, academic and workforce success.
Matthews says MCC has learned several valuable lessons about implementing such fast-track programs. Explaining and marketing Workforce Pell-enabled programs is critical so students know they are an option, he says.
Another takeaway was that Workforce Pell programs require adjustments to traditional systems within an institution, such as to enrollment management systems, given that Workforce Pell programs may not neatly fit into traditional semester sequences and require prorating traditional semester-based financial aid awards.
State programs
Many state community and technical college bodies have already been exploring modifying workforce development instruction along the lines of what the statute envisions for eligibility, SBCTC’s Bruin says. Continuing education efforts across the Washington system are already addressing non-credit-to-credit pathways and related issues of data and whether such programs should include competency-based learning, prior learning and microcredentials.
Some states also provide workforce training funding that will complement Workforce Pell. In Washington, for example, the Washington College Grant provides $460 million in funding for college and career training to more than 100,000 workers per year under an income cap for those without a bachelor’s degree.
SBCTC is working with partner agencies to help member institutions in Washington begin to implement the law, Bruin says. In late August, SBCTC issued a one-page document about information known and unknown about Workforce Pell to member institutions.
Bruin says that SBCTC’s implementation efforts include outreach to relevant state bodies to gain details on compliance obligations, expectations and administrative processes. Also, there is some uncertainty regarding whether Workforce Pell will be first- or last-dollar eligible. Matthews believes it is the former.
Demonstrating compliance with such federal and state requirements may be more challenging in community colleges in states without a state community college system that provides resources for compliance and strong state data reporting frameworks, Matthews says.
In contrast, Arizona already tests for wages and job placement across various agencies, Roark says.
“Pima is working with the Arizona Office of Economic Opportunity on the implementation of an integrated data system, which would have all of the data points we need to implement short-term Pell,” Roark says.
