The U.S. Department of Education recently released a draft proposal of regulatory language that outlines how short-term programs could become — and remain — eligible for the newly created Workforce Pell Grants.
The Workforce Pell program will allow students in programs as short as eight weeks to receive Pell Grants. It was created as part of the massive spending and tax package that Republicans passed this summer and takes effect in July 2026.
The Education Department released the draft proposal ahead of negotiations next week to hash out the regulatory language governing how the program will operate.
In a process known as negotiated rulemaking, stakeholders representing different groups affected by the regulations are to meet Monday to begin discussing the policy details of the Workforce Pell program. Participants include students, employers and college officials.
If they reach consensus on regulatory language, the Education Department will have to use that when formally proposing regulations for Workforce Pell. If the stakeholders don’t reach consensus, the agency will be free to write its own regulations.
The draft proposal outlines the steps state officials will have to take for workforce programs to begin qualifying for Workforce Pell Grants and what student outcome metrics they would need to hit to remain eligible for the grants.
How would programs get approved for Workforce Pell?
The massive budget bill expands Pell Grants to certain workforce-training programs lasting between eight to 15 weeks. For programs to be eligible, governors must consult with state boards to determine if they prepare students to enroll in a related certificate or degree program, meet employers’ hiring needs, and provide training for high-skill, high-wage or in-demand occupations, among other requirements.
Under the Education Department’s draft proposal, each state’s governor would work with its workforce development board to establish which occupations are considered high-skill, high-wage or in-demand and publicly share how the state made those determinations. Governors would also have to seek feedback from employers to develop a written policy for determining whether programs meet local hiring needs.
As established in the spending bill, short-term programs must then receive approval from the Education Department’s secretary before they can qualify for Workforce Pell. Under the statute, programs have to exist for at least one year before they can get approval.
The Education Department’s proposal adds that the secretary wouldn’t be able to approve a program until “one year after the Governor determines that the program met all applicable requirements.”
This means that “all programs would need to wait an additional year before becoming eligible, even if they had already existed for more than a year,” according to a Thursday analysis of the draft from James Hermes, associate vice president of government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges.
AACC plans to work with negotiators to push for that provision to be changed, Hermes said.
How will programs maintain eligibility?
Under the Education Department’s draft language, programs would need to maintain a job placement rate of 70% to remain eligible during the first two years of the Workforce Pell program. But after the 2027-28 award year, they would need 70% of their graduates to specifically land jobs in fields for which they’re being trained, according to the proposal.
During each award year for Workforce Pell, the statute bars programs from posting tuition and fee prices that are higher than the “value-added” earnings of their students. It calculates that difference by subtracting 150% of the federal poverty line from the median earnings of students who completed their program three years prior.
To make that calculation, the Education Department proposed first checking whether that cohort contains at least 50 students. If not, it would look back up to two more years to see if the program meets that benchmark. If the program still misses that threshold, it will look back one more year to achieve a cohort of 30 students.
If looking back those additional years doesn’t yield data from at least 30 students, the Education Department would not complete the “value-added” calculation, according to the draft. However, the agency’s proposal doesn’t address how that would impact a program’s eligibility for Workforce Pell.