The “One Big Beautiful Bill” is hundreds of pages of legislation which lay out the Trump administration’s policy agenda signed into law. I’m particularly interested in five of them, where the bill addresses Pell grants.

While the bill worked its way through Congress, our reporters across the Local Network wrote about what the proposed changes to Pell grants put at stake for students in Texas, Mississippi and Colorado. While these funds survived without many of those changes, I’m interested to follow what will come of “Workforce Pell,” an idea that’s been around for years. The federal government introduced pilots of this kind of Pell grant in 2011, but the “One Big Beautiful Bill” now codifies the concept into federal law.

Workforce Pell allows these funds to be used towards short-term work training programs. It’s a continuation of a red meat issue for the Trump administration and state leaders across the country: Not everyone needs a traditional four-year degree, and there should be options for people to obtain skills and certifications that allow them to move into a job quickly.

This opens up a world of opportunity for training programs and certifications. So long as they’re recognized by an accrediting institution backed by the federal government, students can use Pell grants to enroll. 

“That would actually fund short-term training students to go into short-term training programs, beginning at 8 weeks. And that’s something that we’ve advocated for many years,” Alamo Colleges Chancellor Mike Flores told our reporter in San Antonio last week.

While there is optimism around the concept, the legislation’s timeline is ambitious. It states Workforce Pell will be implemented by July 1, 2026, in time for 2026-27 academic year

“This is an aggressive timeline,” writes Jobs for the Future, a a national nonprofit focused on education and workforce issues. “It is possible that the Department of Education may not be able to take all the steps necessary for implementation in less than a year.”

In the Education Department’s “2011 Pell Grant experiments,” results showed that students who were offered a Pell Grant to pay for short-term occupational training were more likely to enroll in further education than students who didn’t receive these grants, and program completion was also slightly higher. This is according to a November 2024 report from the Institute of Education Sciences, a department within the federal Department of Education.

One notable outcome: “Being offered an experimental Pell grant for a short-term occupational training program did not increase students’ prospects of being employed,” according to the report.

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Elsewhere on Open Campus

From Chicago: Lisa Kurian Philip profiled “Womb Service,” a student group at DePaul which runs a contraceptive delivery network for classmates at locations just off campus. University officials recently suspended the group from campus because of its affiliation with Planned Parenthood. Student leaders accuse DePaul of kowtowing to President Donald Trump.

From Charlottesville: Our newest reporter to join the Local Network spoke with University of Virginia faculty members after President Jim Ryan resigned suddenly on June 27. Allie Pitchon reported that after UVA’s board announced Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Jennifer “J.J.” Wagner Davis would serve in the interim, faculty decried the move as premature and they intend to fight Ryan’s ouster. You can also learn more about our new partner, Charlottesville Tomorrow, here.

From Indianapolis: The Senior Community Service Employment Program is a federal initiative that helps low-income adults over 55 learn new skills and build careers. Claire Rafford detailed how Hoosiers could be left in the lurch in a few months if widespread cuts to federal programs go through.

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