As institutions scramble to prepare students and staff alike for Workforce Pell Grants – which leaders generally agree is a positive expansion of an existing program to support students on different postsecondary journeys, one part of the conversation that is missing from the public space is whether policymakers are inadvertently limiting opportunities for students who might otherwise have gone on to obtain higher credentials.
After years of efforts to expand access to higher education for first-generation and low-income students and students of color, an October 2025 report from the Pell Institute found that the number of first-generation students who expected to obtain a bachelor’s degree in 2022 had been slashed nearly in half – down to 33%, compared to 60% 20 years earlier.
“We have to be very careful in how we think about what are worthy investments in education,” said Dr. Nancy Cantor, president of Hunter College, in an interview with The EDU Ledger, who was quick to say she thinks an investment in workforce programs are a positive step if done with equity top of mind. “I worry a lot when people get very narrow in their approach. We need to think very broadly about who’s going to be the workforce.”
Cantor’s concern is cradled by both demographics projections that say Latinos are expected to comprise 91 percent of the workforce by 2031 and a growing recognition that the wealth gap in the country continues to grow, pushing those who have already been relegated to the margins of society even further out.
The design of workforce programs "[need] to be as much about creative opportunity as it is narrow technical skills,” Cantor continued. Otherwise, she worries that emphasizing workforce programs, especially over traditional higher ed pathways, is “a move backwards to pigeonhole people – and who are they going to pigeonhole? They’re going to pigeonhole Black and brown people. And the rural kids, and Indigenous people.”
Melanie Storey, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), said that it’s important to remember that policy is often iterative and administrators can expect to see more right-sizing of the Pell Grant expansion efforts.
“There's often been a bit of a patchwork about how to fund those kinds of shorter training programs,” Storey said, adding that there has long been bipartisan support for creating pathways for students to have meaningful credentials, even if a degree is not the path for them.
“There have been times that those short-term programs have not delivered on that promise” to “deliver actual benefits to students who partake in them,” she said, adding the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s provisions expanding Pell eligibility to workforce programs include some guardrails to protect students that have been missing in the past.
But the bill also put limits on how much students can borrow for degrees where students will ultimately make lower salaries – careers like teaching and nursing, which Cantor calls “the infrastructure of public service,” where there are already shortages of professionals of color.
“I worry that we are not valuing educators, we’re not valuing social workers, we’re not valuing nurses and on-the-ground healthcare professionals,” she said. “And yet those folks become the infrastructure of public service in the community that will ultimately rebound to help students better prepare to go on with their lives and create social mobility.
Cantor understands well that all of these systems are tied; health outcomes ultimately impact student learning, and if there aren’t good teachers in public schools, then students won’t be prepared to succeed in higher ed.
Storey said there is an opportunity for states to lead and fill in the gaps on some of the lower paying careers that should be considered public services.
“The states and the state institutions have a particular responsibility to meet the workforce needs of their state,” said Storey, who added that public institutions in each state should make sure “that we are offering affordable programs in teaching and nursing fields.”
“From the broader policy perspective, this won’t be the end of change, it never is, so we will continue to push for increasing access for students, particularly those without resources and safety nets,” Storey said.
