When U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon appeared on Fox Business in May to promote that students could soon use federal grants to pay for short-term job training programs, the process she laid out seemed straightforward.
“From eight to 15 weeks, you can go in and get certifications … and get into the workforce and get a job,” she said, calling the new Workforce Pell program a “cheaper way to get certifications.”
McMahon said students pursuing carpentry, electrical and HVAC work would benefit, touting the new Pell program as an “amazing” way to pursue a career. “Workforce Pell,” she later posted on Facebook, “is revitalizing the American Dream!”
But as the program launches this month, the reality is more complicated — suggesting its ability to help both students and employers will be limited.
In North Carolina, state and local community college leaders are struggling to find courses and training programs that fit within the strict parameters for approval.
Less than 1%, or 330, of the approximately 50,000 short-term program sections offered last year across the state’s community colleges met all federal eligibility requirements for Workforce Pell, according to a new analysis by the North Carolina Community College System shared with NC Local and Open Campus.
The system, which oversees the state’s 58 community colleges, had previously predicted that 4% of programs would qualify.
“Colleges just came to the realization that not all courses and programs are going to qualify, and that’s going to be OK,” said Andrew Gardner, associate vice president of workforce strategies for the system.
For decades, the Federal Pell Grant was primarily available to students in financial need pursuing associate and bachelor’s degrees. Workforce Pell, the largest expansion of program eligibility in five decades, allows students enrolling in shorter career training programs to get aid, as well.
Congress approved Workforce Pell last summer, and some federal rules were finalized as recently as mid-May.
That’s left many states hustling to figure out how to review and approve eligible programs so students can tap into this funding. Community colleges — the main providers of such workforce training — are scrambling to determine which programs meet the federal government’s lengthy list of qualifications. Those requirements include that 70% of students graduate from the program and are employed in six months, on top of other conditions.
“This is what happens when a program gets rolled out and has a very tight implementation timeline,” said Lee Bray, a member of the system’s Workforce Pell implementation team and head of financial aid at Pitt Community College in Winterville. She said just one certificate program at Pitt — out of about 25 — initially meets program requirements.
“I’m not exactly sure how beneficial this will be to students, only because I don’t know how many programs are even going to qualify for it,” she added.
Ahead of the July 1 launch of Workforce Pell, NC Local and Open Campus contacted every community college in the state to determine which programs leaders plan to immediately submit for Workforce Pell consideration.
In Charlotte, Central Piedmont Community College — the second-largest community college in the state — identified four eligible programs out of 20: emergency medical technician, IT support technician, phlebotomy and truck driver training courses. Durham Technical Community College initially submitted just two programs — electric line technician and emergency medical technician training — out of some 47.
Forsyth Technical Community College in Winston-Salem identified about 16 out of more than 70. A spokeswoman for Wake Technical Community College, the state’s largest, said the school would submit several programs initially, though she did not specify a number.
In Jackson County, Southwestern Community College won’t submit any programs for approval, citing sufficient funding from other sources to support students. College of The Albemarle in eastern North Carolina won’t roll out Workforce Pell until next year to ensure programs comply with federal rules.
Eleven of the state’s 58 schools declined to specify which programs they plan to submit for review or said they were still identifying programs. Thirty schools did not respond.
A U.S. Department of Education spokesperson did not respond to multiple interview requests about the rollout of Workforce Pell. But last month, Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent told a group of reporters some 28,000 existing programs could qualify nationally.
In North Carolina, the state system identified about 90 potentially eligible programs across all community colleges.
Now-retired system President Jeff Cox said at a February meeting that while he was excited about Workforce Pell, he would “inject a little bit of caution around the level of impact we’re going to have right out of the gate, because it’s a relatively small number of courses that qualify.”
Iris Palmer, a community college researcher at the think-tank New America, said schools aren’t accustomed to the type of rigorous requirements included in the new Pell program.
“They were very excited about it when it passed, and then the reality kind of set in that this is a very different funding mechanism than traditional Pell,” she said.
She and other higher education experts say as it stands, Workforce Pell likely won’t meet initial or even long-term goals without some changes down the road.
“Some of it is just going to have to run for a while to see how it plays out,” Palmer said. “And then we’ll probably need to reform it in some way.”
An ‘imperative’ but complicated program
Congress debated the expansion of Pell Grant access for more than a decade. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia introduced a bill in 2015, saying it was “imperative” that financial aid be made available to students seeking the skills needed to fill workforce shortages.
The Workforce Pell measure finally approved last summer included strict rules: Programs must be at least eight weeks long but less than 15 weeks and include a specified amount of instructional hours. They also need to be at least a year old, focus on high-demand fields, and lead to academic credit that counts toward a degree or certificate program.
Students enrolled in Davidson-Davie Community College’s truck driver training program learn how to park tractor-trailers during a class in Mocksville on June 25. The college plans to submit the course for state and federal Workforce Pell Grant consideration. Credit: Jacob Biba/NC Local North Carolina identified 364 high-demand occupations — everything from cosmetologists and paramedics to sheet metal workers and dental hygienists. Other states identified far fewer. Schools then use that list to vet their own programs for Workforce Pell eligibility.
In North Carolina, schools must apply for an “Eligible Training Provider” designation before submitting any programs for approval to the NCWorks Commission, the body that Gov. Josh Stein tapped to review applications. The commission expects to review the first applications in mid-August.
Once programs are approved at the state level, schools will submit them to the U.S. Department of Education for final review. The timeline for federal approval is unclear.
The Education Department predicts approximately 190,000 students nationwide will benefit from Workforce Pell each year. Before the law passed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated students could receive an average award of $2,200. In the 2024-25 academic year, nearly 580,000 students nationally earned a short-term credential.
This money could help students like Maria Theresa Glessing of Flat Rock cover the costs of the nurse aide credential she’s pursuing at Blue Ridge Community College. The 40-year-old mother of four is an overnight shift supervisor at a memory care unit but hopes to use the new credential to land a job with better wages.
“I cannot say that we are, you know, really broke, broke, but we are surviving,” she said at one recent class before she learned how to measure a patient’s blood pressure.
Maria Theresa Glessing, right, attends a nurse aide course at Blue Ridge Community College in June. Credit: Jacob Biba/NC Local Leigh Angel, the school’s dean of health sciences, said Workforce Pell will help students looking to upskill or improve their job prospects. But she said it likely won’t be enough to relieve the financial stressors that can make it difficult for low-income or adult students to complete even short-term programs.
“Workforce Pell might pay their tuition or their registration fee to take the nurse aide class,” she said. “It’s not going to pay their mortgage or put groceries in their kitchen.”
Sticking points
Education Undersecretary Kent told reporters in June that there’s never been a financial aid program with as many accountability measures as Workforce Pell. He likened the parameters to “a lot of belts and suspenders,” acknowledging “some feel they’re going to be a little tight.”
Officials have said the strict parameters around Workforce Pell are needed to ensure approved programs are high quality and lead to good-paying jobs and to prevent predatory programs from taking advantage of students.
But for many schools, the rules are simply too tough.
Some short-term programs in critical fields — like law enforcement training — can’t be easily condensed into programs less than 15 weeks because the state dictates length.
With courses like law enforcement training, “a lot of states are in the same boat we’re in,” said Stacy Buff, vice president of workforce development at McDowell Technical Community College in Marion. “There’s no way to make it work unless they expand the hours and the weeks.”
The North Carolina Community College System recommended that the federal government create a governor-approved exception for such programs, but it was not authorized.
In other instances, students can only fit weekend or night courses into their schedules, pushing the length of some programs beyond the 15-week maximum.
The 70% job placement rate is another obstacle.
When the federal government solicited public feedback on proposed Workforce Pell rules, the state community college system noted such a high rate “is likely to be elusive” during national recessions or regional slowdowns and said the rule did not consider the “realities of the economy’s dynamics over time.”
Few community colleges have historically tracked completion and job placement data for certificate programs.
John Gossett, president of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, said tracking which students have a job after finishing will be the “biggest sticking point.”
Still, Gossett said he believes Workforce Pell will play a significant role in higher education’s future, given today’s students are more focused on obtaining specific skills needed for a particular job.
“Us baby boomers, we saw education really as one and done,” he said. “I think now people are going to come and go out of our buildings an awful lot through the course of their career, because they’re constantly going to need to be retrained.”
Michael Kubovcik practices backing a tractor-trailer into a parking space during a June truck driver training class at Davidson-Davie Community College. Credit: Jacob Biba/NC Local At 44, Michael Kubovcik of Granite Quarry is one of those students returning to school for retraining.
One morning last month, his head hung out the window of a tractor-trailer, his eyes locked on the big rig’s left side as he slowly backed into a makeshift parking space outlined by orange cones.
Earlier this year, Kubovcik enrolled in truck driver training offered by Davidson-Davie Community College. He returned to the classroom after years of struggling to use his bachelor’s degree in supply chain logistics and transportation.
He decided to pursue trucking after he took a job stocking grocery stores and enjoyed driving from store to store. He paid for his tuition and fees, nearly $900, on a no-interest credit card and started tapping into a retirement fund to make ends meet.
Kubovick said a Workforce Pell Grant would have been nice, given his current salary is $16.50 an hour, but he was wary of how much it would have helped overall.
“Would it have been a major difference? No, because I’m in a pretty bad situation.”
Truck driver training is the type of program that could address the job shortages Workforce Pell was created to help fill. Trucking industry officials point to a shortage of some 80,000 drivers nationally.
Jeff Ferguson, who directs the trucking program at Davidson-Davie, said the program hours make it hard for students to work and take the class simultaneously. His program is among those the school said it’s submitting for Workforce Pell approval.
“If we can save them a pretty huge chunk on their tuition, then maybe that can help them get through the training and then go get a job and make good money,” he said. The average annual salary for a truck driver in North Carolina is about $51,500, according to federal data.
Others were dubious that Workforce Pell would mesh with their training programs.
Anthony Fiorito, director of the truck driver training program at Sampson Community College in Clinton, said he was skeptical that students who are eager to get a job would wait to secure financial aid before starting classes. Plus, he was discouraged by the 70% completion rate requirement.
“I’m definitely not going to pass people just to be able to continue being able to use the Pell Grant,” he said. “That was the biggest thing for me. There’s no way I can guarantee a pass rate.”
‘We may see some relaxation’
Last month, the Education Department published a video on social media declaring, “Workforce Pell is here.” But college leaders and experts stress implementation is still a work in progress.
“This is just a fast-moving process with, honestly, pretty limited guidance — it’s all new,” said Andrea DeSantis, assistant secretary for workforce solutions at the North Carolina Department of Commerce. “There’s real benefits for institutions and students and states to roll this out, and we’re excited about it. But we are moving quickly on this.”
Students learn how to measure blood pressure during a nurse aide class at Blue Ridge Community College in Hendersonville. Credit: Jacob Biba/NC Local Gardner, at the state community college system, describes the start of Workforce Pell as Workforce Pell 1.0. “We’re really gearing up for Workforce Pell 2.0,” he said, “once we get our sea legs.”
Undersecretary Kent has said that some of the program’s strict parameters could be eased as time goes on. “We’ll see how states react,” he said in June. “I think we may see some relaxation of those standards.”
And Palmer, of New America, noted the tough requirements aren’t all bad.
“What we’ve seen in the past is when you just open up the spigot of federal financial aid with no accountability and no controls around it, you get a lot of stuff that maybe doesn’t get anybody a job.”
Some community college administrators also appreciate that the program reinforces the message that not everyone needs a bachelor’s degree to earn a living wage.
Monica Carpenter, vice president of economic and workforce development at Blue Ridge Community College, said she hopes long-term that Workforce Pell can help students realize that “high quality credentials can be just as life-changing as traditional degree pathways.”
“A four-year degree is not always the pathway for everyone,” she said. “That credential is very valid and can lead to … a very high-demand, high-wage career.”
This story is a collaboration between NC Local and Open Campus.
Molly Bohannon, an investigative reporter covering community colleges for the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and Open Campus, contributed to this report.
