ED Wants to Begin and End Workforce Pell This Week

Talks over how to regulate Workforce Pell, a new need-based financial aid program for short-term job training certificates, will kick off this week at the Department of Education. But the meeting agenda, released late Thursday afternoon, is raising concerns among members of the advisory committee as well as outside higher education policy experts.

Department officials are hoping to reach a final agreement on the regulatory proposal for the new grant program and a few other Pell-related issues by Friday, according to the agenda. Historically, negotiations over new regulations take place over several weeks of meetings, though this administration wrapped up one of its prior rule-making sessions, concerning Public Service Loan Forgiveness, in just one week.

An advisory committee, which includes representatives from the department, typically meets for a week of negotiations. Then they break, creating an opportunity to ask questions, talk with constituents and develop alternate proposals. It’s only after several weeks that they come back together for a second or even third week of debate on the same topic before taking a final vote. If the committee reaches consensus, the plan will be released for public comment as is. If not, the department can rewrite the policy as it sees fit.

But this time around, the Education Department is facing a July 1, 2026, deadline to implement the various higher ed policy changes in the One Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which Congress passed over the summer. In addition to Workforce Pell, this round of talks will also include a new college accountability measure called the Do No Harm standard, which requires programs to show their graduates earn more than an adult with a high school diploma in order to access federal student loans.

Policy experts say trying to squeeze the regulations for both policy changes into one period is concerning enough, especially since the Christmas holiday will take place between the two sessions. (The next scheduled round of talks begins Jan. 5.) But when the department released its agenda, their concerns escalated.

Rather than discussing proposals for Workforce Pell and the accountability system over both sessions and waiting to conduct both consensus votes until January, the department opted to split them up entirely and will now take two separate votes—one at the end of each week.

“What that means—or what that would seem to mean—is that there won’t really be a period where there will be discussion around a topic and then a break where folks might go back and talk about it with constituencies and others and come back and have further conversation around that topic,” said one committee member who wanted to remain anonymous.

Other policy experts, especially those who are pushing for stricter eligibility standards, say the department’s approach is problematic. They worry that without being granted any time in between sessions, committee members will not be able to properly scrutinize the policy and ensure it can be implemented smoothly.

For instance, the OBBBA says that in order to be eligible for the Workforce Pell, certificate programs must be deemed “in-demand,” “high-skill” or “high-wage.” They also must be proven to have a 70 percent completion rate and a 70 percent job placement rate in a career related to the program and pass an earnings test that compares tuition to the median salary of graduates. And while the Trump administration’s initial proposal addresses those elements, delegating some responsibilities to the states and retaining others for the federal government, multiple policy experts told Inside Higher Ed that often, the line in the sand is not clear enough.

Questions remain about the timeline for program approval, the data infrastructure needed, the technical details of calculations for both eligibility and accountability metrics and how unconventional, noncredit and apprenticeship programs will fit into the mix. Because so much remains murky, some say compressing negotiations into one week is not a good idea.

“I understand they’re up against a time clock, like, Congress did not do anyone favors on this,” said Wesley Whistle, a project director for student success and affordability at New America, a left-leaning think tank. “But the idea that they’re going to vote on consensus next week for Workforce Pell is absurd.”

Whistle has been on the other side of rule-making processes as a department appointee under the Biden administration. He added that taking public comment into consideration and having time to work through legal and operational concerns is important to ensure a policy is sound.

“This is a really bad way to implement policy,” he said. “To me it goes against the intent of negotiated rule making.”

Jessica Thompson, senior vice president at the Institute for College Access and Success, echoed Whistle, saying there’s a reason that this is not how rule making has been done in the past.

“To truncate the ability to think through the details of how this program is actually going to be implemented for the first time ever is just to put that much more risk into play for students and for families,” she said. “It also puts states in a difficult position in terms of really being able to engage in their own thoughtful process and make sure that they have the opportunity to understand how the department is going to be defining their role in this process and to create the [infrastructure] they need to be prepared.”

But multiple sources, including the committee member and a workforce policy expert who also asked to speak on background, noted the time frame could benefit the Trump administration in that it leaves little time for negotiation.

“The longer that this lingers out there, the more likely people will start identifying holes and questions,” the workforce policy expert explained.

Either way, most policy experts say they are worried that the lack of time could lead to weaker, less thoughtful regulations. And while policy experts say looser guidelines and more opportunities for waivers at first could allow for the grant program to stand up quicker and create new revenue streams for eager programs, it could also cause confusion or create an added burden for the state higher education systems that grant eligibility or lead to less checked uses of taxpayer dollars. Consumer advocates worry that students could be allowed to invest in programs that leave them worse off than when they started.

“What Congress created is complicated to administer, to say the least. And we’ve got a lot of challenges administering what we’ve already got. I’ll just put it that way,” the committee member said. “So, you know, we will see what happens. I don’t know how controversial that’s going to be, but my hope is that all the negotiators see the value in making this program work and work well as quickly as possible.”