JFF Public Comments on Workforce Pell Legislation in OBBBA

Tamy Abernathy
U.S. Department of Education
Office of Postsecondary Education
400 Maryland Avenue SW, 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20202

Docket ID ED-2025-OPE-0151-0001

Dear Ms. Abernathy:

As the U.S. Department of Education (the Department) considers implementation of the provisions under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), Jobs for the Future (JFF) appreciates the opportunity to provide comments to inform the Department and the AHEAD Committee under Docket ID ED-2025-OPE-0151-0001.

At JFF we support building a future that works for everyone and transforming our education and workforce systems to drive economic opportunity for people, businesses, and communities. In alignment with that mission, JFF has established a North Star goal — that by 2033, 75 million Americans facing barriers to economic advancement will have quality jobs. JFF believes that the federal government can play an important role in helping eliminate barriers and supporting opportunities for all. This includes support for both traditional and non-traditional student populations and creating multiple avenues for success.

The passage of ‘Workforce Pell’ legislation has long been a priority for JFF. It is our hope that this expanded access to grant aid will provide students who face barriers to accessing postsecondary education an opportunity to enroll in quality training programs. Our nation’s education and employment systems were built based on the assumption of a linear sequence of life events: People first graduate high school, maybe go to college, enter the workforce, raise a family, reach the pinnacle in a career, and then retire. Such a rigid and siloed approach to learning and work is no longer effective for today’s learners and workers.

In response to economic shifts, many students have sought out nondegree pathways and programs to quickly attain the skills necessary for good jobs. If implemented effectively, Workforce Pell can be a powerful tool in promoting accessible and affordable options for learners and workers – especially those without prior postsecondary education or training.

Presently, education and skills development opportunities remain out of reach for many Americans: too expensive, too time-consuming and cumbersome to navigate, and too disconnected from labor market demand and the realities of personal lives. To eliminate dead ends for workers and learners, we must promote education and training options that are accessible, discoverable, and achievable. With those principles in mind, JFF offers the following comments on the notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM):

Stakeholders and Expertise to Inform the AHEAD Committee

JFF has concerns with the Department’s decision to collapse the typical negotiator slots for two-year public institutions and four-year public institutions into a singular category, and requests that the Department decouple these categories given the importance of the topics under consideration for the AHEAD Committee, including Workforce Pell, Gainful Employment, Financial Value Transparency, and the new earnings accountability metric for undergraduate degree and graduate programs. Both two-year public and four-year public institutions are major stakeholders in the consideration and implementation of these changes, and their viewpoints are not monolithic on these topics as they differ in terms of student population, credential offerings, and institutional missions. Community colleges, in particular, must have voting representation on the committee given the impact of these changes on their colleges and students, as well as their role in the formation and passage of Workforce Pell legislation.

Additionally, JFF has concerns regarding the lack of representation from financial aid administrators (FAAs) on the AHEAD Committee panel. Typically, the Department has included FAAs as part of the negotiation committee when considering changes to financial aid that encompass programmatic eligibility, student eligibility, and award calculation and distribution. Frankly, no stakeholder group can match the level of knowledge that the FAAs offer in terms of the practical implications of enacting changes to the Pell Grant program.

JFF also encourages the Department to include as part of the negotiated rulemaking process internal or external experts on workforce development. Workforce experts could provide critical technical expertise on labor market analytics, credential quality and portability, regional and sectoral differences, best practice for implementing prison-based programming for incarcerated learners, practical strategies for effective state-federal coordination, and up-to-date knowledge about wider workforce development trends. This expertise is essential to ensure that regulations developed by the AHEAD Committee are both rigorous and workable while avoiding unintended barriers to the creation of high-quality programs aligned with the needs of the American economy.

JFF also recommends that the Department consider utilizing experts who can help inform the implementation of Workforce Pell for incarcerated learners and those returning home from jail or prison. By leveraging knowledge in this area from higher education institutions, state workforce boards, state agencies, people impacted by the criminal legal system, and others involved with the implementation of Prison Education Programs, the AHEAD Committee and the Department can ensure regulations are attuned to the challenges unique to providing effective short-term credentialing programs in prison and reentry settings. For example, when considering implementation of the 70 percent completion and job placement rate requirements, the Department should ensure that programmatic eligibility is not impacted when participants transfer between facilities (a common occurrence for people in prison).

JFF also requests that the Department consider and incorporate lessons learned from the Short-Term Pell Experimental Site initiative that ran from 2012 – 2017. Much of the public reporting from that experiment focused on student outcomes. While that type of evaluation was important for determining the efficacy of the experiment, there are other lessons that can be learned from those experiments that can apply to implementation.  We encourage the Department to utilize experts both at the Department and externally who can speak to other ways the program functioned, including award calculations, developing a formula for cost of attendance, the use of Return of Title IV (R2T4), and data collection. External stakeholders have no window into those aspects of the experimental site and have instead largely relied on anecdotal information from the colleges that participated. We believe that an informed decision-making process on these topics requires a strong understanding of how the program functioned under the experimental sites.

Centering Alignment between Systems

Conceptually, Workforce Pell offers an opportunity to create greater alignment between higher education and workforce. Traditionally, institutions often silo nondegree programs of study as either credit bearing or continuing education (which is typically noncredit), the needs and goals of those students are often the same. In practice, this division can reduce nondegree students’ access to campus resources like career counseling, academic advising, and other support services. Policymakers should take steps to break down these arbitrary barriers and ensure that Workforce Pell drives institutional reform; without intentional focus on this issue, the Department risks compounding the uneven distribution of resources and support to students in short-term training programs vs their degree-seeking peers. Ultimately, Workforce Pell students must receive the same opportunities and supportive services as other Title IV recipients.

To fully realize the potential of Workforce Pell, the Department should consider systems-level reforms to promote the integration of education, training, and support for learners and workers, whether through negotiated rulemaking or guidance. While the OBBBA incorporates some language for Workforce Pell which mirrors the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act (Perkins V) and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), ultimately it is the Department’s responsibility to shape the determination and application of metrics, including how selected metrics potentially align with existing laws and regulations. While the federal government should afford states some flexibility to build upon existing structures, it must also establish some basic elements and floors to ensure consistency and enable cross-state comparisons.

Additionally, the Department and committee should assess the availability of federal administrative data, data quality, and flexibility in determining the feasibility of calculating completion rate, placement rate, and the new value-added earnings metric. Ideally, the Department would provide federal administrative data or UI wage record data to help institutions demonstrate that they meet minimum thresholds for programmatic eligibility. However, presently there are significant gaps and blind spots to this approach which the committee and the Department need to consider. There will have to be a balance in reducing the burden for states and institutions while still ensuring quality and accuracy.

Earnings Metrics, and the Application of High-Skill, High-Wage, In-Demand

JFF’s comments on the Workforce Pell wage provisions and the application of high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand are two-fold: first, of the optional metrics (high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand), we believe that the Department should prioritize in-demand; and second, with the potential application of three separate wage metrics for determining program eligibility, the Department will have to be thoughtful in its approach.

In terms of high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand, we believe this is an area of opportunity for some alignment with existing definitions and applications within Perkins V and WIOA. In fact, the OBBBA statute already defines high-wage as meaning the same as the Perkins V statutory definition.  The Department should apply the same standards and definition for high-skill as is in Perkins V. In terms of defining in-demand, JFF believes this is an essential metric for assessing the value of short-term education and training programs, and one that the Department should emphasize. Students enter short-term programs with the goal of improving their employment opportunities; in order for such programs to deliver on that promise, they must track to real job opportunities.

In-demand is also a particularly difficult metric to define since there is an existing definition in WIOA, states often have their own definition to identify specific in-demand sectors or occupations, and the available data for assess demand can vary state to state. Ultimately, there may need to be some flexibility to support existing state work around credentials of value. JFF hopes to work with the Department to further inform the structure of this metric.

Through statute and regulations, Workforce Pell programs may have to pass three separate earnings metrics: value-added earnings; an earnings threshold under Gainful Employment (GE); and potentially a high-wage metric. The Department and negotiators need to consider the interaction of these wage metrics to avoid a cumbersome process that may unintentionally hinder and delay programmatic approval.

JFF previously submitted joint comments on GE wage metrics, which relayed trepidation about relying on high school earnings as a primary program eligibility metric.[i] While JFF still believes that “bright line” wage floors alone cannot comprehensively assess programmatic value, we recognize that this is part of the statutory requirement under OBBBA for degree programs. Hence, we recommend the Department take a uniform approach to applying this metric to degree programs, per OBBBA requirements and all other programs, via Gainful Employment regulations. Ideally, the calculation would account for regional wage information, given the significant variation in earnings within states. Otherwise, the Department risks disadvantaging rural programs and students.

JFF believes that the implementation of the new value-added earnings metric may be particularly challenging in terms of available data relative to past earnings. Since these are programs that are not currently Title IV and are often also not eligible state aid, the information necessary to gather past earnings data may not be accessible. Addressing this challenge will be an important topic for negotiated rulemaking. We suggest that the Department consider a provisional or temporary approval process, which is discussed in the section below.

Initial Approval of Programmatic Eligibility for Workforce Pell

The Workforce Pell statute, as written under OBBBA, presents fundamental challenges in terms of initial program approval. The bill requires programs to be in operation for not less than one year, while simultaneously requiring a three-year look back on wages to calculate value-added earnings. Further, the OBBBA states that the value-added earnings calculation is based on the wages of students who completed the program and received federal financial aid.  At present, very few students would meet both requirements (perhaps the only exception being if the student was enrolled in a 300-599 clock hour program that was approved for Direct Loans). Additionally, depending on the state, institutions may not have the identifying information necessary to match prior short-term program students with their state wage records data – even if the program has been in existence for one or more years.

In lieu of statutory language that addresses these challenges, the Department and negotiators should consider a provisional approval process for Workforce Pell programmatic eligibility. Primarily, provisional approval should offer flexibility for earnings data that are not available for the initial application for programmatic approval. JFF believes this will primarily impact the implementation of the value-added earnings metric; however, it may also affect the ability for programs to demonstrate that they meet high-wage metrics and pass GE wage floors. While the Department may consider options like inputting expected wages of a program completer, such an approach should be temporary and with the consideration of additional guardrails. In most states, data associated with job placement only demonstrates that a person is employed in any job, with no specifics on industry or occupation. Hence, that approach may incorrectly assume that program completers are uniformly in jobs associated with the credential they earned.

Additionally, we believe it will be essential for the Department and the committee to consider parameters for periodic review of programmatic approval by the states. As the needs of our workers and economy shift, programs will need to be reviewed to ensure that they still meet the needs of employers and demand within the state.

Noncredit Programs

Even though the statutory language within the OBBBA does not specifically weigh in on the treatment of noncredit programs, we encourage the Department to clearly address eligibility standards for such programs. While not widely utilized, noncredit education and training programs are eligible for the Pell Grant program.[ii] While JFF is not aware of the current status or scope of noncredit programs approved for Pell Grant eligibility, we are familiar with community college programs that received past approval. Historically, the process was opaque, without clear guidance from the Department. At a minimum, the Department should plan to provide additional guidance on whether noncredit programs are eligible for Workforce Pell, the process and requirements for such eligibility, and how that may differ from noncredit programs that would otherwise be the equivalent of 600 clock hours or more.

Interim Guidance for States on Workforce Pell

JFF believes the Department should provide interim guidance to states in some areas, as they prepare for their role in evaluating and approving Workforce Pell programs. While it would not be a comprehensive snapshot, guidance could help alleviate outstanding questions. This may include information for institutions of higher education around timelines, data, and the expected approval process; how awards will be calculated, including the application of cost of attendance; definitions that will ultimately match those used in Perkins V or WIOA; and other items that may fall outside of the purview of negotiations.

Additionally, interim guidance could address critical questions around alignment and flexibility, such as Workforce Pell’s interaction with federal financial assistance that falls outside of the purview of the Department. This may include how to blend and braid Workforce Pell with WIOA Individual Training Accounts or other federal assistance.

States will also have to consider how the expansion of Title IV aid (to include approved Workforce Pell programs that are 150 — 599 clock hours) may interact with their own state aid eligibility. It is not uncommon for state financial aid programs to statutorily mirror programmatic eligibility for Title IV or the Pell Grant program. Hence, it may be prudent for the Department to highlight for states the forthcoming addition of Workforce Pell and how the July 1, 2026, implementation date may also impact state financial aid. States, institutions, and financial aid administrators will also need to prepare for those changes, which may be challenging given the tight timeline between the final rule and implementation.

Conclusion

JFF thanks the Department for its consideration of our comments. We look forward to working with the Department to provide additional guidance and expertise on ways to successfully implement Workforce Pell, as well as other issues to be considered by the AHEAD Committee. Please contact Jennifer Stiddard, JFF Senior Director, Government Affairs, jstiddard@jff.org with any questions.

Sincerely,

Maria Flynn
President & CEO
Jobs for the Future

[i] https://www.regulations.gov/comment/ED-2023-OPE-0089-3269

[ii] The Power of Pell Mott Community College’s Use of Federal Aid to Train Unemployed Workers and Dissolve Silos Between Credit and Noncredit. The Aspen Institute, 2016, http://www.aspenwsi.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/Promising-Practices-The-Power-of-Pell.pdf.