Under the 2025 reconciliation bill, known as H.R. 1, access to Pell Grants was expanded to allow students in programs as short as eight weeks to receive funding under the new Workforce Pell program. The federal expansion of Pell Grants to support short-term workforce training represents a major opportunity to strengthen California’s talent pipeline, particularly for adults, opportunity youth, working learners, and Californians historically excluded from higher-wage careers. With Workforce Pell set to go live on July 1, 2026, California must act now to shape how these dollars are used. Without thoughtful state leadership, Workforce Pell could unintentionally displace state investments or expose students to low-value training that consumes their limited financial aid. Comprehensive state policy can ensure that California maximizes access to this new resource for learners, particularly those who have been left out of our state’s prosperity.
As a non-partisan statewide coalition that brings together employers, labor groups, social justice advocates, educational institutions, and workforce organizations to advance economic mobility and broadly shared prosperity, the California EDGE Coalition offers the following recommendations to guide California’s approach to Workforce Pell. California can take proactive steps to protect students, promote equity, strengthen outcomes, and align Workforce Pell with the state’s broader higher education, workforce, and apprenticeship strategies. The recommendations below outline a statewide framework that centers student success, quality, and cross-system alignment.
1. Protect State Investments and Guarantee Wraparound Supports
California should protect and build on, not replace, its current investments in short-term training. As Workforce Pell becomes available, California should avoid reducing or replacing its own short-term training funds solely because new federal funding is available. Rather, the state should maintain these investments on behalf of students, particularly those who are ineligible for Pell, including many immigrants, by redirecting them to wraparound services, advising, and other supports. This approach ensures that new federal dollars supplement, rather than supplant, existing state investments so that overall support for learners increases.
Workforce Pell providers should also be required to help students access basic needs and wraparound services, whether by offering them directly or connecting students to existing campus, community, and workforce resources. This ensures learners get both access to quality programs and the supports they need to complete and advance.
2. Establish Quality Standards for Workforce Pell Programs
H.R. 1 requires states to determine whether programs seeking Workforce Pell eligibility meet criteria ensuring they lead to high-skill, high-wage jobs in in-demand industries, with stackable credentials tied to future employment. This creates a key opportunity for California to set clear standards that prioritize high-quality programs and ensure strong value for learners.
California should adopt standards that limit access to Workforce Pell to programs that show strong results for students, including earnings that meet or move toward regional living-wage benchmarks, and credential or licensure attainment where relevant.
Programs should also prioritize offering direct connections to Registered Apprenticeships, pre-apprenticeships, or other employer-backed pathways so learners can transition smoothly from training into paid, high-quality jobs. Further, programs should be able to demonstrate placement into employment, apprenticeship, or further education within a few months of program completion.
The standards should reflect high-quality training design, including meaningful employer engagement and documented industry demand. Employers should help identify in-demand skills and valued credentials, participate in reviewing and signaling which programs meet their hiring needs as part of the implementation and eligibility screening process, and serve as intentional partners in offering paid work-based learning opportunities and connecting students to quality jobs upon completion. The standards should also require clear wage and career progression pathways, stackable and portable credentials, alignment with in-demand occupations, and worker-centered practices such as safe workplaces and predictable scheduling.
Quality programs should also be equity-focused, with concrete strategies and measurable results for serving priority populations who have been excluded from higher-wage careers.
To make this feasible, the state should provide technical assistance, data tools, and resources that help colleges, adult schools, apprenticeship sponsors, and community-based providers build and sustain high-quality programs.
Finally, the state should require programs to make information publicly available on cost, program duration, and outcomes, plus an explanation of how participation will affect a student’s limited Pell lifetime eligibility.
3. Protect Students’ Lifetime Pell Eligibility
The state should ensure students understand that Workforce Pell counts toward the federal Pell Lifetime Eligibility Used (LEU) cap of 600% (roughly six years of full-time study). This could be accomplished by requiring institutions to provide a simple, standardized Pell Eligibility Notice – in plain language and multiple languages – showing a student’s remaining Pell eligibility, how much the program will use, and whether the program stacks into additional credentials. This approach would protect students from unintentionally exhausting Pell dollars without burdening institutions with cumbersome new administrative requirements.
4. Protect Students While Supporting High-Quality Providers
California should focus its strongest Workforce Pell oversight on providers that pose the most risk, while keeping things workable for proven public and community-based institutions. Workforce Pell should only be available to fully accredited institutions in good standing, with short-term programs reviewed at the program level, and unaccredited third parties should not be allowed to deliver instruction under a college’s brand.
For-profit, new, or previously sanctioned providers should face extra vetting – such as probationary participation, stronger financial protections, and clear standards for recruitment, completion, job placement, and earnings – with defined steps for suspending or removing programs that consistently harm students.
At the same time, the state should streamline approval and reporting for public and nonprofit providers already in state accountability systems, rely on existing data sources instead of building new ones, and offer predictable multi-year approvals so high-quality providers can focus on serving students, not navigating constant red tape.
Further, the state should require that any program enrolling Californians in a Workforce Pell Grant program, including online programs without a physical presence in California, obtain state approval before advertising the availability of Pell Grant funds or disbursing those funds. California should also prohibit institutions that access Workforce Pell from affiliating with companies that offer private education loans for short-term programs, unless those loans or payment plans charge no interest.
Finally, institutions approved to participate in Workforce Pell should be prohibited from charging tuition and fees for a short-term program that are higher than the maximum Pell Grant available to any student in that program. Capping the total price at or below the maximum Pell award would discourage institutions from inflating tuition, help ensure that students who receive the maximum award do not need to take on debt to enroll, and make sure that federal investments benefit students rather than primarily increasing institutional revenue.
5. Ensure Broad Access, Protect Learners’ Data, and Strengthen Transparency
California should ensure Workforce Pell supports equitable access for immigrant and other underrepresented learners by (1) protecting student data, in particular for immigrant students, by setting clear limits on how personal information is shared, (2) allowing the use of Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITIN) where permitted, and (3) supporting multilingual, culturally responsive outreach through trusted community, adult education, and community-based partners.
At the same time, California should rely on existing data systems – especially the Cradle-to-Career Data System – to publish clear, program-level information on program costs and duration completion rates, job placement results, post-completion earnings, licensure pass rates, apprenticeship connections, and disaggregated equity indicators. A “no unnecessary burden” approach should guide this work: the state should use data that are already collected wherever possible, streamline any new reporting requirements, and provide tools that help students and communities make informed choices without creating duplicative or cumbersome reporting expectations for high-quality public and community-based providers.
6. Expand Workforce Pell Opportunities and Maximize Impact
California should take intentional steps to ensure Workforce Pell reaches as many students as possible and strengthens the state’s full workforce training ecosystem. This includes:
Helping community colleges, adult schools, apprenticeship sponsors, and community-based organizations bring high-value short-term programs into eligibility. Federal law requires programs to meet specified requirements related to completion rates, job placement rates, and post-completion earnings. Both gathering the necessary data and meeting these standards may be challenging, and support will likely be necessary to maximize uptake.
Integrating Workforce Pell into California’s financial aid system. This should include clarifying how it interacts with the Cal Grant program, particularly Cal Grant C, simplifying and aligning application and award processes across federal and state programs, and ensuring state aid remains complementary and available for non-tuition costs. Attention should also be given to how Workforce Pell can be braided with Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) funding, adult education, and other state resources to cover the non-tuition costs, such as housing, food, transportation, and childcare, that often determine whether students can complete a program.
Using data to identify regional gaps and support the creation of new programs in high-demand fields.California should use disaggregated labor market and student outcome data to identify where learners lack access to Workforce Pell-eligible programs in high-demand, higher-wage fields. State agencies and regional partners should use these insights to create or expand high-quality programs that close those gaps.
Together, these strategies will help California fully leverage the new federal law and expand access to meaningful training opportunities statewide.
7. Create a Workforce Pell Advisory Group
Create a Workforce Pell Advisory Workgroup that includes, but not limited to, representatives from the California Department of Education, the higher education segments, including the Community Colleges, the California Student Aid Commission, the California Workforce Development Board, Cradle-to-Career Data System, adult education, labor, employers, local workforce boards, community-based and immigrant-serving organizations, as well as students and workers. The workgroup should advise on program standards, alignment with the Cal Grant program and support services, responses to underperforming programs, equity monitoring, and continuous improvement.
For questions, please contact Anna Alvarado, Chief of Policy & Government Affairs at aalvarado@caedge.org.