After years of debate (and advocacy by the NSC network) over how to expand affordable, career-focused education for working adults, Congress took a major step this year. The recent budget package created Workforce Pell, a policy that finally allows students in high-quality, short-term programs to access the nation’s most important need-based grant for postsecondary education. It’s possibly the most consequential new policy in the workforce space in almost a decade.
Done well, Workforce Pell can open faster, affordable routes to good jobs for people balancing work, family, and school. Done ineffectively, we’ll risk entrenching existing inefficiencies and inequities that hold back both workers and local communities’ economic growth.
As we move into the implementation phase, the real test of Workforce Pell begins: ensuring that this policy delivers on its promise of expanding opportunity for working people and helping employers hire with confidence. Implementation requires federal and state leaders to set clear quality standards for eligible programs, build systems to measure outcomes, and strengthen employer-driven partnerships that ensure training aligns with labor-market needs. These decisions will determine whether Workforce Pell expands opportunity or reinforces existing disparities.
And, if that to-do list sounds familiar, it should! They’re the same elements that our workforce and education systems need to prepare people for good jobs, whether through a community or technical college, an apprenticeship program, or a community-based training cohort. In this way, Workforce Pell is likely to be a mirror that shows us both where our systems are strong and where deeper policy reforms and investments are long overdue – and desperately needed to achieve real transformative impact. It’s especially important to note that Workforce Pell can’t fix the inequities caused by decades of underinvestment in black or brown workers, immigrants, women, disabled workers.
We’ve seen before what happens when a single policy is asked to solve systemic workforce challenges. A decade ago, apprenticeship was treated as that solution.
Back in 2015, bipartisan interest in apprenticeship surged among state and federal leaders. Congress invested hundreds of millions of dollars to support expansion of apprenticeships. Nearly three quarters of states invested significant dollars in their budgets, and the vast majority of states launched credential attainment and work-based learning or apprenticeship expansion goals. The Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations made it a mainstay of their commitment to preparing workers for good jobs.
These investments were (and continue to be) incredibly impactful. There are now almost twice as many active apprentices as there were in 2015. Growth has been especially strong among apprentices under the age of twenty-four and above the age of fifty-five. And the apprenticeship pipeline has become more diverse. The number of both Black and female apprentices has increased more rapidly than the number of white male apprentices (who, historically, had comprised most apprentices).
Despite these meaningful gains, apprenticeship investments alone couldn’t solve the systemic challenges that workers and employers face. Nor have they removed all the barriers to good jobs created by erosion of supports like SNAP and TANF or by long-term disinvestment in workforce training – a trend NSC has been documenting across more than two decades of declining federal investments in skills.
Our country’s experience with apprenticeship expansion shows us both the promise of focused investment and the limits of single-policy solution.
Workforce Pell is a powerful tool that – paired with clear rules, modern data, real employer partnership, and student supports – can turn access into mobility for workers and help businesses find talent. If policymakers treat Workforce Pell as a catalyst – the spark that reveals the policies and investments the broader system still needs, we can use implementation to surface and fix longstanding problems.
But if we treat it as a cure-all, we’ll miss the chance to use this moment to build the next generation workforce system our economy deserves. That bigger conversation – about what comes next – is the one we need to begin. Workforce Pell starts it, and we are looking forward to continuing.
