Tag: Colleges

How Colleges and States Can Make Workforce Pell a Reality

Community colleges secured a massive legislative win earlier this month after more than a decade of advocacy. Workforce Pell, at long last, is en route to become a reality.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law July 4, extends Pell Grants to low-income students enrolled in eligible short-term programs, between eight and 15 weeks long. The policy shift is expected to put money in the pockets of hundreds of thousands of students per year to help them afford these quicker, increasingly popular programs—and bring an influx of funds to the institutions that offer them.

But realizing those gains will take some time, and with the policy scheduled to get off the ground next summer, some experts are worried a year won’t be long enough to parse the program’s details and ensure a smooth rollout.

Lawmakers in Congress and colleges have been working toward some form of workforce Pell since former senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana pushed it forward as a part of the JOBS Act in 2014.

Since then, multiple attempts to enact the Pell expansion have failed even as the idea gained more bipartisan support. And for a moment in late June, workforce Pell seemed dead in the water when a nonpartisan Senate official, known as the parliamentarian, claimed it violated the rules of the Senate’s reconciliation process. Senators ultimately kept it in their version of the bill but limited the new Pell funds to accredited providers, appeasing the parliamentarian.

“We’re very thankful to the persistence of our champions in Congress on this legislation from both parties in both chambers, for the commitment they made to this legislation,” said David Baime, senior vice president of government relations at the American Association of Community Colleges, noting that while the bill was partisan, support for this provision has been “bipartisan all down the line.”

Community college leaders are “extremely enthusiastic” about the policy change after the immense “political effort that’s gone into this,” he added. “We consistently hear reports from our campuses about the importance of finding financing sources for low-income students to participate in these programs.”

Others, however, feel trepidation, as workforce Pell is on the precipice.

Wesley Whistle, project director for student success and affordability at New America, a liberal think tank, said for-profit colleges and online program managers, which set up short-term online programs for community colleges and other institutions, have also been eagerly awaiting the policy shift. Despite safeguards built into the legislation, such as job-placement rates, he worries students will still be lured into subpar programs at for-profits or slapdash, mass-produced online programs also eligible for the funds.

“I hope I’m wrong,” he said. “We’re talking about our most vulnerable students.”

Despite the bill’s passage, debates over workforce Pell are hardly over. Now, the hard work of planning for implementation begins.

What Happens Next

Workforce Pell is slated to take effect next July. But for that to happen, numerous details need to be hashed out by the U.S. Department of Education, states and program providers in the coming months.

Under the legislation, short-term programs need to meet a set of standards to be eligible for Pell money. And the task of making sure programs meet the qualifications is divvied up between states and the federal government.

The Education Department is responsible for checking that programs have existed for at least a year, boast completion and job-placement rates of at least 70 percent, and charge tuitions below graduates’ median “value-added earnings,” or the degree to which their income exceeds 150 percent of the federal poverty line three years out of the program.

State governors must ensure short-term programs prepare students for high-skill, high-wage or in-demand jobs. The resulting credentials also must be “stackable and portable across more than one employer,” unless preparing students for jobs with just one recognized credential. Credentials need to count toward academic credit for a certificate or degree program, as well.

Still, many questions linger about how workforce Pell will operate—likely to be answered through negotiated rule making, a lengthy process by which the Education Department creates rules and regulations by convening and listening to key stakeholders and experts, as well as public comment.

“There isn’t a lot of meat on the bones of the outline of what implementation would look like,” said Katie Spiker, chief of federal affairs for the National Skills Coalition, a research and advocacy organization focused on workforce training. “A whole lot of decisions and next steps … that will ultimately decide how impactful and effectively short-term Pell rolls out are still left to be determined.”

For example, some states already have quality frameworks in place for short-term programs and have spent more than $5 billion subsidizing these programs; it’s unclear how federal workforce Pell will work alongside these existing state-level initiatives. The legislation also doesn’t say who’s involved in deciding how “high-skill, high-wage or in-demand” jobs are defined. Spiker hopes those decisions draw on input from business leaders, education providers and state workforce agencies to make “public workforce and education systems better aligned.”

Whistle agreed some of the guardrails need ironing out. He was heartened to see a tuition limit based on graduates’ salaries—a new addition since earlier versions of the policy—but he finds aspects of the requirement murky. For example, bachelor’s degree holders qualify for workforce Pell under the law, so he worries their higher salaries could throw off the metric, intended to ensure tuitions are reasonable relative to what graduates will earn. The measure is also based on graduates’ earnings three years down the line, raising questions about how to ensure programs younger than three years don’t rip students off, he said.

Colleges’ To-Do List

As the department works through the policymaking process, colleges will also have their own work to do to get workforce Pell ready.

Higher ed institutions that want to participate will need to collect the data to prove they meet eligibility metrics, said Jennifer Stiddard, senior director of government relations at Jobs for the Future, an organization focused on the intersection between education and the workforce. If they don’t have that data, they’ll need to build up the reporting infrastructure.

In addition to measuring completion and job-placement rates, “do they think they have the data to prove a program is in demand?” Stiddard said. “Are they going to be able to demonstrate that the program articulates for credit?”

She expects community college systems in some states will be more ready than others to answer those questions, based on their states’ existing investments in short-term programs. For example, Virginia community colleges already have outcomes data on hand because of the FastForward program, which offers short-term training for jobs locally in high demand, with the state covering much of the cost. Institutions in other states, like Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas, may have a head start, as well, she said. And some colleges that are further behind could decide it’s not worth it.

Baime, of AACC, said the association plans “to work as closely as we can with the administration to ensure that institutions are able to make their programs eligible as soon as possible.”

Among community college leaders, “the overwhelming feeling, of course, is positive,” he added, “but there are issues of implementation that need to be ironed out sometime hopefully before next July 1 so we can get this program up and running.”

An ‘Aggressive’ Timeline

Some experts guffawed at the yearlong timeline set for implementing workforce Pell.

Karishma Merchant, associate vice president of policy and advocacy at Jobs for the Future, called the July 2026 deadline “aggressive” but “possible” if the department gets started immediately. (Workforce Pell is just one item on the department’s task list for the next year, and experts are skeptical that the agency can get all the work done.)

Even if the process could be done in a year, Spiker believes it shouldn’t be. She said a year doesn’t seem like an “effective and reasonable” amount of time to solicit feedback from different stakeholders and disentangle how the program aligns with the patchwork of existing state investments in short-term training.

“We will be encouraging the department and states to take the time to be able to do a successful implementation that enables short-term Pell to grow over time and to serve more students and more workers, instead of pushing just to meet a relatively arbitrary timeline,” Spiker said.

She emphasized that the process comes on the heels of drastic staff cuts at the Education Department and a larger plan to dismantle the agency, which so far includes shifting career and technical education and adult basic education programs to the Department of Labor.

These changes are “taxing already on the agency,” she said, “and then to be spearheading an implementation simultaneous with all of those huge shifts … just makes the path forward even more difficult.”

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July 17, 2025
Mixed Findings on Community Colleges’ Shared Governance

A new report, released by the American Association of University Professors Tuesday, found mixed results when it comes to community colleges’ shared governance practices.

The report used data from the AAUP’s inaugural survey of community colleges, conducted in partnership with the Center for the Study of Community Colleges. In the first survey of its kind, faculty leaders at 507 community colleges were asked to assess their institutions’ shared governance practices in 26 different decision-making areas; faculty senate chairs and governance officials responded at 59 colleges.

The institutions excelled in some areas and proved lackluster in others. For example, at most institutions surveyed, especially those with tenure systems, faculty had an AAUP-recommended level of authority over decisions about curricula, salary policies, teaching assignments, faculty searches and evaluations, and tenure and promotion standards. But when it came to other decision-making areas—like budgets, provost selection, buildings and strategic planning—faculty were given little say, according to the report.

Community college professors also participated less than faculty at four-year institutions in most academic and personnel-related decisions, though they played more of a role in decisions about salary policies. The report speculated that the prevalence of community college faculty unions may account for the difference. At higher ed institutions where faculty engage in collective bargaining, faculty tend to have more authority in salary policies and teaching loads. At community colleges, unionized faculty are also more engaged in decisions about full-time, non-tenure-track faculty promotion.

“Community college–based faculty members and administrators can use the tools described in this report to assess governance practices at their institutions and compare those practices with national trends to identify areas where levels of faculty authority might be strengthened,” the report says. “Given the current political climate, economic uncertainty, demographic changes, and chronic underfunding of US higher education, now is the time for community colleges to identify and correct weaknesses in their own shared governance practices.”

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July 16, 2025
Moody’s: Trump’s tough international student policies could hit some colleges hard
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Dive Brief:
- The Trump administration’s restrictive policies for international students present a financial risk for many U.S. colleges by potentially deterring them from enrolling, Moody’s analysts said in a recent report.
- Analysts pointed to visa disruptions, increased scrutiny of social media accounts, changes to deportation rules, and recent travel bans and restrictions to the U.S. from 19 countries. The Trump administration has also created confusion around visas for Chinese students, who account for nearly a quarter of international students.
- While the impact on upcoming academic terms remains unclear, the changing policies are “diminishing the perception of the US as a prime destination for higher education,” the analysts said.
Dive Insight:

Colleges have been bracing for potential revenue and enrollment hits since the second Trump administration quickly struck an aggressive approach to immigration and international students.

When the administration moved to bar Harvard University from enrolling international students, the private institution sought and won a court order temporarily blocking the move the next day.

The ongoing legal spat underscores just how critical international enrollment is for the Ivy League university. In the 2024-25 academic year, Harvard’s roughly 6,800 foreign students made up 27.2% of the university’s total student body.

And just this week, George Washington University cited, among other federal moves, a slowdown in visa processing and President Donald Trump’s travel bans when explaining the need for painful budget measures, including possible layoffs.

International students make up over 20% of enrollment at 11% of the colleges rated by Moody’s. But that figure may understate the financial impact of lower international enrollment.

Foreign students typically pay full tuition and fees at colleges, noted Moody’s analysts Debra Roane, vice president and senior credit officer, and Emily Raimes, associate managing director. And they do so at a time when the ranks of traditional-age college students are projected to decline significantly in the coming years.

“Universities intending to fill the gap with more international students may fall short,” Roane and Raimes said in the report.

The analysts ran a stress test on colleges rated by Moody’s to look at the financial impact of international student enrollment declines. Given a 10% drop in international enrollment, 54 out 392 institutions would suffer a hit to a measure of their operating performance of at least half a percentage point. Seven of those colleges would see those margins decrease by two to eight percentage points.

With a 20% drop in international enrollment, 130 colleges would lose at least half a percentage point from their margins, and 18 among them would lose two to eight points. Those with already low margins could face “significant financial stress,” Roane and Raimes said.

The analysts noted, however, that highly selective colleges or those with considerable financial reserves might “better absorb the impacts by adjusting operations or increasing domestic enrollment.” Other prominent colleges might be able to mitigate international student declines through alternative revenue sources like fundraising and endowment spending.

But others could have a much tougher time. Roane and Raimes pointed to specialty institutions, such as arts colleges — which are already facing a tough environment — whose student bodies can be over 30% international.
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July 11, 2025
House panel pushes colleges to cut ties with Chinese scholarship program
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Dive Brief:
- A Republican-led House committee is pushing seven research universities to cut ties with a scholarship program sponsored by the Chinese government.
- In four-page letters Tuesday, Republican Rep. John Moolenaar, chair of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, decried the China Scholarship Council as “one of the nefarious mechanisms” the Chinese government uses to advance its technologies and urged each college involved with the council to “reconsider its participation.”
- Moolenaar further set a July 22 deadline for college leaders to provide his committee with extensive documentation on their institutions’ work with the council from May 2020 to May 2025.
Dive Insight:

The China Scholarship Council, a program funded by the Chinese Communist Party, partners with colleges in other countries and sponsors both Chinese students studying abroad and international students studying at Chinese universities.

Participating Chinese students must return to China after graduating and work for at least two years.

In Moolenaar’s letters to college officials Tuesday, he announced that the House committee on the Chinese government is conducting a “systematic review” of “the China Scholarship Council’s infiltration of U.S. colleges.”

“CSC purports to be a joint scholarship program between U.S. and Chinese institutions,” he said. “However, in reality it is a CCP-managed technology transfer effort that exploits U.S. institutions and directly supports China’s military and scientific growth.”

About 7% of Chinese citizens studying abroad — some 65,000 students — are sponsored by the China Scholarship Council, according to a 2020 analysis by Georgetown University’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology.

A relatively small minority of them end up in the U.S. In 2024, the council announced plans to sponsor up to 240 students to study at seven U.S. colleges this year, the South China Morning Post reported.

The seven participating institutions, all of which received a letter from Moolenaar on Tuesday, are Dartmouth College, Temple University, the University of Tennessee, the University of Notre Dame and three campuses in the University of California system — Davis, Irvine and Riverside.

The number of sponsored students and the length of their studies in the U.S. vary by college. For example, the University of California, Davis co-sponsors up to 10 Ph.D. candidates, while Temple co-sponsors up to 60 graduate students, according to Moolenaar’s letters.

However, a Dartmouth spokesperson said the college cut ties with China Scholarship Council well before receiving Moolenaar’s letter, making the decision last academic year, per the college’s student newspaper. The spokesperson told the publication that the college’s partnership with the council led to the enrollment of fewer than 10 participants over the last decade.

Likewise, the University of Notre Dame this week told The Associated Press that it began to cut ties with the council earlier this year.

Moolenaar noted that all the institutions rely on “significant federal funding” for their research, citing research funding levels from years before Trump retook office. And China has “a history of exploiting the openness of the American higher education and research system to enhance its technological competitiveness and military capabilities,” he said.

A 2020 proclamation from President Donald Trump, made during his first term, restricted certain Chinese researchers and graduate students from gaining visas to study in the U.S. The goal, Trump wrote at the time, was to prevent Chinese nationals from attempting to “acquire and divert foreign technologies.”

Several months after Trump issued the proclamation, the University of North Texas cut off ties with the China Scholarship Council, abruptly forcing more than a dozen Chinese researchers participating in the program to leave the country.

Former President Joe Biden continued to enforce the proclamation during his term.

“It is imperative to assess how the UCD-CSC joint scholarship program — explicitly designed to develop [Chinese] talent in cutting edge technology at graduate levels — serves U.S. interests,” Moolenaar said in his letter to the chancellor of the University of California, Davis. He echoed the line in his letters to the heads of the other six colleges.

Among his document requests, Moolenaar called for colleges to list if any Chinese students participating in the program switched to a STEM major after initially declaring a non-STEM major and if any participating students worked on federally funded research. Officials should also justify how supporting the development of participating students advances U.S. interests, he said.
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July 10, 2025
Withheld Adult Education Funds Worry Community Colleges

The Trump administration is holding up hundreds of millions of dollars slated for adult education programs as part of a review of education spending.

The roughly $716 million was supposed to be disbursed to states July 1 and then divvied up among their adult education providers, such as community colleges. But the funding for high school equivalency classes, English as a second language programs and other adult education services never arrived. The news comes as the Trump administration continues to withhold $7 billion from states for K–12 education, including ESL classes and after-school programs, which includes the adult education money.

The freeze is part of a broader “ongoing programmatic review of education funding,” an unnamed spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed.

“Initial findings show that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,” wrote the OMB spokesperson, citing examples of states and schools using the money to support students in the country without proper documentation as well as for a seminar on “queer resistance in the arts,” though the statement made no mention of adult ed programs.

The fate of the withheld funding remains unclear. “No decisions have been made yet,” the spokesperson said.

Now states and their community colleges, which offer a significant share of adult education programs, are scrambling to figure out how to continue providing adult education services despite staggering funding shortfalls.

“If funding is not provided, there are nothing but bad options for institutions,” said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations for the American Association of Community Colleges. He predicts community colleges would have to reduce adult education services, lay off personnel and vie for funds to fill in the gap from states and other sources. But even so, “the funding is so substantial in a number of places that there’s no immediate source of replacing that money.”

He emphasized that adult education programs have received “broad support from both parties for decades”—and they were already underfunded relative to student need.

Adult basic education is “a core function and a core part of the mission of community colleges across the country,” he said.

Adult education is one of several programs on the chopping back in the Education Department’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026. Officials wrote in budget documents that states and localities are “best suited to determine whether to support the activities authorized under this program or similar activities within their own budgets and without unnecessary administrative burden imposed by the federal government.”

Higher ed advocates worry other programs like the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program that are on the chopping block could suffer a similar fate.

Concerns Across the Country

Community colleges in red and blue states alike are anxiously waiting for the adult education funds to come through.

Heather Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Colleges, said if the pause persists beyond two months with no alternative funding, Kansas’s 19 community colleges will have to make “tough decisions” about laying off or furloughing staff.

She added that college leaders were given no notice, leaving them with no time to prepare.

“Situations where funding doesn’t come as expected are real hardships on small colleges and really leave staff in a position of wondering and not knowing what’s coming next,” she said.

Joe Schaffer, president of Laramie County Community College in Wyoming, said the withheld funds risk hurting high-demand, successful adult education programs in the state.

He noted that, historically, the coal and oil industries in the state offered well-paying jobs that didn’t necessarily require a high school diploma. But now, because of changes in technology and the state’s diversifying economy, many jobs do require at least a high school education. Wyoming workers hit with that realization are coming to adult education programs later in life to earn high school equivalency certificates, commonly referred to as the GED.

And the programs work. Roughly 80 percent of Wyoming adult basic education students get a job or enroll in college after their programs, and 84 percent earn a credential beyond a GED. These programs graduate more people with a high school equivalency than any one high school in the state, making the programs arguably Wyoming’s “largest high school,” he said.

Because the state funds half of these programs, he believes Laramie County Community College can make do without the federal funds and continue to offer these programs for another year, with some belt-tightening measures.

But still, the move to withhold federal funds risks “reducing the flow of high school graduates at a time when the workforce pipeline, the talent pipeline, is a concern of everybody across the nation,” Schaffer said.

Morgan agreed that state economies would suffer if adult education programs took a permanent funding hit.

For many Kansans, “this is their option to get out of poverty and to get into a higher-paying job,” she said. “The ability for them to get skilled up is important, and we have to have the resources to do that, and the uncertainty that’s been injected into the system is not helpful in trying to meet our mission, which is to prepare citizens for the Kansas economy.”

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July 10, 2025
Hard up for students, more colleges are offering college credit for life experience, or ‘prior learning’

PITTSBURGH — Stephen Wells was trained in the Air Force to work on F-16 fighter jets, including critical radar, navigation and weapons systems whose proper functioning meant life or death for pilots.

Yet when he left the service and tried to apply that expertise toward an education at Pittsburgh’s Community College of Allegheny County, or CCAC, he was given just three credits toward a required class in physical education.

Wells moved forward anyway, going on to get his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees. Now he’s CCAC’s provost and involved in a citywide project to help other people transform their military and work experience into academic credit.

What’s happening in Pittsburgh is part of growing national momentum behind letting students — especially the increasing number who started but never completed a degree — cash in their life skills toward finally getting one, saving them time and money.

Colleges and universities have long purported to provide what’s known in higher education as credit for prior learning. But they have made the process so complex, slow and expensive that only about 1 in 10 students actually completes it.

Many students don’t even try, especially low-income learners who could benefit the most, according to a study by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning, or CAEL.

“It drives me nuts” that this promise has historically proven so elusive, Wells said, in his college’s new Center for Education, Innovation & Training.

Stephen Wells, provost at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. An Air Force veteran, Wells got only a handful of academic credits for his military experience. Now he’s part of an effort to expand that opportunity for other students. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

That appears to be changing. Nearly half of institutions surveyed last year by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, or AACRAO, said they have added more ways for students to receive these credits — electricians, for example, who can apply some of their training toward academic courses in electrical engineering, and daycare workers who can use their experience to earn degrees in teaching.

Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

The reason universities and colleges are doing this is simple: Nearly 38 million working-age Americans have spent some time in college but never finished, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Getting at least some of them to come back has become essential to these higher education institutions at a time when changing demographics mean that the number of 18-year-old high school graduates is falling.

“When higher education institutions are fat and happy, nobody looks for these things. Only when those traditional pipelines dry up do we start looking for other potential populations,” said Jeffrey Harmon, vice provost for strategic initiatives and institutional effectiveness at Thomas Edison State University in New Jersey, which has long given adult learners credit for the skills they bring.

Being able to get credit for prior learning is a huge potential recruiting tool. Eighty-four percent of adults who are leaning toward going back to college say it would have “a strong influence” on their decision, according to research by CAEL, the Strada Education Foundation and Hanover Research. (Strada is among the funders of The Hechinger Report, which produced this story.)

The Center for Education, Innovation & Training at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. The college is part of a citywide effort to give academic credit for older students’ life experiences. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

When Melissa DiMatteo, 38, decided to get an associate degree at CCAC to go further in her job, she got six credits for her previous training in Microsoft Office and her work experience as everything from a receptionist to a supervisor. That spared her from having to take two required courses in computer information and technology and — since she’s going to school part time and taking one course per semester — saved her a year.

“Taking those classes would have been a complete waste of my time,” DiMatteo said. “These are things that I do every day. I supervise other people and train them on how to do this work.”

On average, students who get credit for prior learning save between $1,500 and $10,200 apiece and nearly seven months off the time it takes to earn a bachelor’s degree, the nonprofit advocacy group Higher Learning Advocates calculates. The likelihood that they will graduate is 17 percent higher, the organization finds.

Related: The number of 18-year-olds is about to drop sharply, packing a wallop for colleges — and the economy

Justin Hand dropped out of college because of the cost, and became a largely self-taught information technology manager before he decided to go back and get an associate and then a bachelor’s degree so he could move up in his career.

He got 15 credits — a full semester’s worth — through a program at the University of Memphis for which he wrote essays to prove he had already mastered software development, database management, computer networking and other skills.

“These were all the things I do on a daily basis,” said Hand, of Memphis, who is 50 and married, with a teenage son. “And I didn’t want to have to prolong college any more than I needed to.”

Meanwhile, employers and policymakers are pushing colleges to speed up the output of graduates with skills required in the workforce, including by giving more students credit for their prior learning. And online behemoths Western Governors University and Southern New Hampshire University, with which brick-and-mortar colleges compete, are way ahead of them in conferring credit for past experience.

“They’ve mastered this and used it as a marketing tool,” said Kristen Vanselow, assistant vice president of innovative education and partnerships at Florida Gulf Coast University, which has expanded its awarding of credit for prior learning. “More traditional higher education institutions have been slower to adapt.”

It’s also gotten easier to evaluate how skills that someone learns in life equate to academic courses or programs. This has traditionally required students to submit portfolios, take tests or write essays, as Hand did, and faculty to subjectively and individually assess them.

Related: As colleges lose enrollment, some turn to one market that’s growing: Hispanic students

Now some institutions, states, systems and independent companies are standardizing this work or using artificial intelligence to do it. The growth of certifications from professional organizations such as Amazon Web Services and the Computing Technology Industry Association, or CompTIA, has helped, too.

“You literally punch [an industry certification] into our database and it tells you what credit you can get,” said Philip Giarraffa, executive director of articulation and academic pathways at Miami Dade College. “When I started here, that could take anywhere from two weeks to three months.”

Data provided by Miami Dade shows it has septupled the number of credits for prior learning awarded since 2020, from 1,197 then to 7,805 last year.

“These are students that most likely would have looked elsewhere, whether to the [online] University of Phoenix or University of Maryland Global [Campus]” or other big competitors, Giarraffa said.

Fifteen percent of undergraduates enrolled in higher education full time and 40 percent enrolled part time are 25 or older, federal data show — including people who delayed college to serve in the military, volunteer or do other work that could translate into academic credit.

“Nobody wants to sit in a class where they already have all this knowledge,” Giarraffa said.

At Thomas Edison, police academy graduates qualify for up to 30 credits toward associate degrees. Carpenters who have completed apprenticeships can get as many as 74 credits in subjects including math, management and safety training. Bachelor’s degrees are often a prerequisite for promotion for people in professions such as these, or who hope to start their own companies.

Related: To fill ‘education deserts,’ more states want community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees

The University of Memphis works with FedEx, headquartered nearby, to give employees with supervisory training academic credit they can use toward a degree in organizational leadership, helping them move up in the company.

The University of North Carolina System last year launched its Military Equivalency System, which lets active-duty and former military service members find out almost instantly, before applying for admission, if their training could be used for academic credit. That had previously required contacting admissions offices, registrars or department chairs.

Among the reasons for this reform was that so many of these prospective students — and the federal education benefits they get — were ending up at out-of-state universities, the UNC System’s strategic plan notes.

“We’re trying to change that,” said Kathie Sidner, the system’s director of workforce and partnerships. It’s not only for the sake of enrollment and revenue, Sidner said. “From a workforce standpoint, these individuals have tremendous skill sets and we want to retain them as opposed to them moving somewhere else.”

Related: A new way to help some college students: Zero percent, no-fee loans

California’s community colleges are also expanding their credit for prior learning programs as part of a plan to increase the proportion of the population with educations beyond high school.

“How many people do you know who say, ‘College isn’t for me?’ ” asked Sam Lee, senior advisor to the system’s chancellor for credit for prior learning. “It makes a huge difference when you say to them that what they’ve been doing is equivalent to college coursework already.”

In Pittsburgh, the Regional Upskilling Alliance — of which CCAC is a part — is connecting job centers, community groups, businesses and educational institutions to create comprehensive education and employment records so more workers can get credit for skills they already have.

That can provide a big push, “especially if you’re talking about parents who think, ‘I’ll never be able to go to school,’ ” said Sabrina Saunders Mosby, president and CEO of the nonprofit Vibrant Pittsburgh, a coalition of business and civic leaders involved in the effort.

Pennsylvania is facing among the nation’s most severe declines in the number of 18-year-old high school graduates.

“Our members are companies that need talent,” Mosby said.

There’s one group that has historically pushed back against awarding credit for prior learning: university and college faculty concerned it might affect enrollment in their courses or unconvinced that training provided elsewhere is of comparable quality. Institutions have worried about the loss of revenue from awarding credits for which students would otherwise have had to pay.

That also appears to be changing, as universities leverage credit for prior learning to recruit more students and keep them enrolled for longer, resulting in more revenue — not less.

“That monetary factor was something of a myth,” said Beth Doyle, chief of strategy at CAEL.

Faculty have increasingly come around, too. That’s sometimes because they like having experienced students in their classrooms, Florida Gulf Coast’s Vanselow said.

Related: States want adults to return to college. Many roadblocks stand in the way

Still, while many recognize it as a recruiting incentive, most public universities and colleges have had to be ordered to confer more credits for prior learning by legislatures or governing boards. Private, nonprofit colleges remain stubbornly less likely to give it.

More than two-thirds charge a fee for evaluating whether other kinds of learning can be transformed into academic credit, an expense that isn’t covered by financial aid. Roughly one in 12 charge the same as it would cost to take the course for which the credits are awarded.

Debra Roach, vice president for workforce development at the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh. The college is working on giving academic credit to students for their military, work and other life experience. Credit: Nancy Andrews for The Hechinger Report

Seventy percent of institutions require that students apply for admission and be accepted before learning whether credits for prior learning will be awarded. Eighty-five percent limit how many credits for prior learning a student can receive.

There are other confounding roadblocks and seemingly self-defeating policies. CCAC runs a noncredit program to train paramedics, for example, but won’t give people who complete it credits toward its for-credit nursing degree. Many leave and go across town to a private university that will. The college is working on fixing this, said Debra Roach, its vice president of workforce development.

It’s important to see this from the students’ point of view, said Tracy Robinson, executive director of the University of Memphis Center for Regional Economic Enrichment.

“Credit for prior learning is a way for us to say, ‘We want you back. We value what you’ve been doing since you’ve been gone,’ ” Robinson said. “And that is a total game changer.”

Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, [email protected] or jpm.82 on Signal.

This story about credit for prior learning was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter. Listen to our higher education podcast.

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July 10, 2025
What Colleges and Universities Should Take Away from What Happened at UVA

What happened to the President of UVA is devastating. And we have let ourselves believe it is surprising. But, while it should be shocking that the federal government – one that has been repeatedly talking about the return of education to the states – is interfering with the administration of a public university, it should have been expected if you were paying attention.

Amanda Fuchs MillerWhy is that? This Administration, as promised in Project 2025 and as evidenced by the appointees placed in Trump’s White House and the Department of Education, laid out a roadmap they would take to undermine higher education, as they are doing with other democratic institutions. Using colleges’ responses to October 7^th, and in the name of fighting antisemitism, the Trump Administration has taken steps since January 20^th to undermine colleges and universities – not chipping away but taking a sledgehammer and finding everything to be a nail.

The tools in this Administration’s toolbox include cancelling funding, slashing federal student aid, investigating and auditing schools, removing and threatening international students and immigrants, and increasing the costs of higher education institutions doing their work – from indirect cost increases on research funds to attempting to revoke tax-exempt status, and the list goes on.

These actions have, and will, hit institutions across the board hard – from Columbia and Harvard to public state schools to small independent colleges to community colleges. All of these schools – and their students – rely on and benefit from public investments in higher education.

And the damage is not just to the schools and students. The communities, cities, and states where these schools are located benefit economically when colleges and their students thrive. Our nation’s standing as a leader in innovation – in technology, medical advancements, and other fields – will be threatened without federal investments in higher education. And, without academic freedom ensuring a diversity of viewpoints at our institutions, free from political interference, our democracy will be at risk.

So, what lessons can we take from what happened at UVA and the forced resignation of President Ryan?

First, this has never been just about the Ivies. There has been a belief that the elite schools are the target. Just take a look at the list of the 60 colleges that the Trump Administration opened investigations into, under the pretext of antisemitism, in March – Ivy League schools but also publics (in blue states and red states), privates, and small independent colleges. The reconciliation bill, which was signed into law last week, eliminated Grad PLUS loans and capped Parent PLUS loans – programs that help students at all schools, including HBCUs.  And, the President’s FY26 budget would eliminate programs that fund wraparound services which will hurt community college students who rely most heavily on those federal investments.

Second, it is not just about the words used. Following UVA President Ryan’s resignation, DOJ Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon told CNN that although UVA decided in March 2025 to dissolve its DEI office, it “used a series of euphemisms to simply rebrand and repackage the exact same discriminatory programs that are illegal under federal law.”

This raises a couple of lessons that can be learned as higher ed institutions look ahead. Following the President’s executive orders on diversity, equity and inclusion, many organizations began scrubbing their websites, shuttering DEI offices, and disbanding committees with diversity and equity in their titles. Schools instead need to first do a campus-wide review of their activities. Then, they should undertake a risk assessment to both determine which activities can be viewed as being in contrast to Trump’s executive orders and the new certifications being tied to federal funding and to determine which activities are actually in violation of current state and federal antidiscrimination laws. The first bucket of activities – those that do not follow the executive orders – may put schools’ funding at risk but are not necessarily illegal. This Administration is using a chilling effect to stop allowable initiatives that are in contrast with their ideology and politics. Understanding the risk is important for schools to protect themselves but schools must also continue to fulfill their missions of serving all students and providing diverse environments and inclusive communities and must be ready to push back when wrongly being accused of engaging in “illegal DEI,” which isn’t in and of itself a thing.

Sometimes changing the words, or renaming or eliminating an office, may be necessary. In fact, for federal grants, agencies are utilizing AI to do word searches so there may be a reason to use different words and reframe proposals for federal funds. But, if schools are going to do so, they need to engage in genuine stakeholder outreach to explain what is and what isn’t changing. In addition to the closing of UVA’s DEI office now being criticized as irrelevant in the eyes of the Trump Administration, the school leadership faced criticism from faculty, students and other university community members when they did so, which likely caused them to lose some of the support they needed to push back against the false charges by DOJ.   Explaining which changes are being made early – and which aren’t and why – can help college leaders on multiple fronts.

Third, this Administration is continuing to not tell the truth about what the U.S. Supreme Court 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard (SFFA) meant. Assistant Attorney General Dhillon told CNN in her interview about UVA, “It’s not just admissions part, it’s also preferences in special programs while students are at the school … this is all illegal under Students for Fair Admissions.” Well, no. The Supreme Court’s decision in SFFA was about admissions. Telling schools to stop activities because of SFFA in other areas is again a scare tactic that must be pushed back on both in courts and in the court of public opinion.

This is the time for higher ed institutions and their stakeholders to come together and fight back. Institutions must think outside the box and do the hard work so that they can continue to fulfill their missions of serving all students and being inclusive communities while not increasing the risks of harmful actions that will hurt their students, their communities, the economy, and our democracy.

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Amanda Fuchs Miller served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Higher Education Programs at the U.S. Department of Education in the Biden-Harris Administration. She is the president of Seventh Street Strategies, which provides advocacy and policy supports to higher ed institutions, nonprofit organizations, and foundations.

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July 8, 2025
Trump Team Weakens Bipartisan Law That Protects Students and Veterans From Predatory Colleges (David Halperin)

On the eve of the 4th of July holiday, when they probably hoped no one was paying attention, the Trump Department of Education issued an Interpretive Rule that will make it easier for for-profit colleges to evade regulations aimed at protecting students, and especially student veterans and military service members, from low-quality schools.

The Department’s 90-10 rule, created by Congress, requires for-profit colleges to obtain at least ten percent of their revenue from sources other than taxpayer-funded federal student grants and loans, or else — if they flunk two years in a row — lose eligibility for federal aid. The purpose is to remove from federal aid those schools of such poor quality that few students, employers, or scholarship programs would put their own money into them.

For decades, low quality schools have been able to avoid accountability through a giant loophole: only Department of Education funding counted on the federal side of the 90-10 ledger, while other government funding, including GI Bill money from the VA, and tuition assistance for active duty troops and their families from the Pentagon, counted as non-federal. That situation was particularly bad because it motivated low-quality predatory schools, worried about their 90-10 ratios, to aggressively target U.S. veterans and service members for recruitment.

After years of efforts by veterans organizations and other advocates to close the loophole, Congress in 2021 passed, on a bipartisan basis, and President Biden signed, legislation that appropriately put all federal education aid, including VA and Defense Department money, on the federal side of the ledger.

The Department was required by the new law to issue regulations specifying in detail how this realignment would work, and the Department under the Biden administration did so in 2022, after engaging in a legally-mandated negotiated rulemaking that brought together representatives of relevant stakeholders. In an unusual development, that rulemaking actually achieved consensus among the groups at the table, from veterans organizations to the for-profit schools themselves, on what the final revised 90-10 rule should be.

The new rule took effect in 2023, and when the Department released the latest 90-10 calculations, for the 2023-24 academic year, sixteen for-profit colleges had flunked, compared with just five the previous year. These were mostly smaller schools, led by West Virginia’s Martinsburg College, which got 98.73 percent of its revenue from federal taxpayer dollars, and Washington DC’s Career Technical Institute, which reported 98.68 percent. Another 36 schools, including major institutions such as DeVry University, Strayer University, and American Public University, came perilously close to the line, at 89 percent or higher.

The education department last week altered the calculation by effectively restoring an old loophole that allowed for-profit colleges to use revenue from programs that are ineligible for federal aid to count on the non-federal side. That loophole was expressly addressed, via a compromise agreement, after Department officials discussed the details with representatives of for-profit colleges, during the 2022 negotiated rulemaking meetings.

All the flunking or near-flunking schools can now get a new, potentially more favorable, calculation of their 90-10 ratio under the Trump administration’s re-interpretation of the rule.

In the lawless fashion of the Trump regime, the Department has now undermined a provision of its own regulation without going through the required negotiated rulemaking process. (The Department’s notice last week included a labored argument about why its action was lawful.)

As it has done multiple times over its first six months, the Trump Department of Education, under Secretary Linda McMahon, has again taken a step that allows poor-quality predatory for-profit colleges to rip off students and taxpayers.

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July 7, 2025
Indiana public colleges to shed or consolidate over 400 degree programs
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Dive Brief:
- Six of Indiana’s higher education institutions are moving to collectively cut or consolidate over 400 programs in the face of a state law taking effect Tuesday that aims to end academic offerings that award low numbers of degrees.
- The programs on the chopping block account for 19% of all degree offerings at the state’s public higher education institutions. The colleges opted to consolidate 232 programs, suspend 101 and eliminate 75.
- Under the new state law, public colleges must seek approval from the Indiana Higher Education Commission to continue degree programs that don’t graduate enough students to meet certain thresholds. If the commission doesn’t grant approval, colleges must eliminate those programs.
Dive Insight:

The new quotas are a part of a slate of last-minute provisions that Indiana lawmakers added to the state’s budget plan, which was signed into law in early May, to reshape college governance. Along with the quotas, lawmakers also implemented post-tenure reviews for faculty and gave Republican Gov. Mike Braun full control over selecting Indiana University’s governing board.

Braun praised the degree cuts and consolidations in a statement Monday, casting them as a way to ensure public colleges prepare students for in-demand fields and streamline their offerings.

“This will help students make more informed decisions about the degree they want to pursue and ensure there is a direct connection between the skills students are gaining through higher education and the skills they need most,” Braun said.

Under the new law, associate degree programs are on the chopping block if the average number of students they graduate falls under 10 students over the past three years, while bachelor’s programs are at risk if they graduate fewer than an average of 15 students. Master’s and doctoral programs have slightly lower thresholds — an average of seven and three students, respectively.

Indiana University is moving to cut or consolidate 249 programs across its campuses, the most out of the six institutions. Of those, the university is immediately eliminating 43, suspending another 83 and consolidating 123.

Indiana University Bloomington, the flagship campus, will see 116 degree cuts or consolidations.

The cuts and consolidations at Bloomington heavily impact programs in education, humanities and foreign languages, including bachelor’s programs in Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. However, they also include STEM programs, such as bachelor’s in statistics and atmospheric science.

Ahead of the news, some faculty members expressed concern they could lose their jobs due to the state law, Heather Akou, president-elect of the Bloomington Faculty Council, recently told WFYI.

“Even tenured faculty are wondering, am I going to have a job in two months?” Akou told the station. “We’re scheduled to teach classes. Will I be allowed to teach the classes I’m scheduled to teach this fall? I don’t know. That’s really the level of chaos and confusion that’s going on right now.”

An Indiana University spokesperson on Tuesday said that 27 programs would be created through consolidating other programs. The spokesperson did not answer questions about how the cuts and consolidations would impact faculty, but referred Higher Ed Dive to a university announcement detailing the changes.

Purdue University is moving to cut or consolidate 83 programs, followed by Ball State University (51 programs), Indiana State University (11 programs), Ivy Tech Community College (10 programs) and University of Southern Indiana (4 programs).
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July 2, 2025
Podcast: Industrial strategy, cashpoint colleges, social mobility

This week on the podcast we examine the government’s new industrial strategy and what it really means for higher education – from regional clusters and research funding to skills bootcamps and spin-out support.

Will the plans finally integrate universities into the UK’s economic future, or is this another case of policy promises outpacing delivery?

Plus we discuss the franchising scandal and the damning case for urgent reform, and ask whether new research on social mobility challenges the sector’s claims about access, aspiration, and advancement.

With Katie Normington, Vice Chancellor at De Montfort University, Johnny Rich, Chief Executive at the Engineering Professors’ Council and Push, James Coe, Associate Editor at Wonkhe and presented by Mark Leach, Editor-in-Chief at Wonkhe.

Higher education and the industrial strategy priority areas

The cashpoint campus comeback franchising, fraud, and the failure to learn from the FE experience

On the move: how young people’s mobility responds to and reinforces geographical inequalities

Inequalities in Access to Professional Occupations

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June 26, 2025