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My morning news reading routine has a new step lately—processing all of the US Department of Education (ED) Workforce Pell approval announcements and associated news coverage.
UPCEA summarized the news in a blog post.
Nearly three months after Workforce Pell Grants (Pell awards for programs of 150–599 clock hours, or 8 to fewer than 15 weeks) became available on July 1, the rollout is moving at very different speeds from state to state. UPCEA’s September blog post on state Workforce Pell readiness found over 30 jurisdictions with working approval pipelines, over a dozen still building them; the Opportunity Data implementation tracker now counts 36 operational jurisdictions.
Is Workforce Pell really becoming a juggernaut transforming workforce-oriented academic programs? Did people such as myself, who worried that overzealous regulatory guardrails would lead to very limited participation, miss the size of the opportunity?
The announcements show progress, but we need to focus on when students can actually use the aid, and how many learners will receive it. Today, I want to look underneath the headlines and identify what to watch as implementation continues.
tl;dr—there is good progress on approvals but no signs yet of meaningful, at-scale adoption of Workforce Pell.
Keeping out the Wild West
One recurring concern throughout the multi-year debate about Workforce Pell (and in the public comments I analyzed last December) was that expanding Pell to short-term programs could create a new Wild West: federal funding flowing to questionable credentials, with insufficient evidence that students would complete training or find worthwhile employment.
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