This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
Federal financial aid is the engine of the country’s higher education system, pouring billions in student loans and grants into California alone, and this summer, the U.S. Department of Education plans to expand aid for students enrolled in short-term job training programs.
Except the state isn’t ready.
Launching a new financial aid program means creating new systems at the state and local level, and the California Student Aid Commission, the state agency in charge, said it needs more help. Although the federal aid program is slated to begin as soon as July 1, Daisy Gonzales, the executive director of the aid commission, has said repeatedly, both in state hearings and in an interview with CalMatters, that the money won’t be available to students until weeks or even months later.
Financial aid systems are “extremely complex,” she said, and the state lacks the infrastructure to build one on the federal government’s timeline.
The new financial aid awards, known as short-term or workforce Pell grants, are an expansion of the federal Pell grant program, which has for decades offered thousands of dollars in cash to low-income students for tuition and living expenses.
Historically, students in short-term job training programs were ineligible for federal student aid. The new Pell grants will give money to students who enroll in programs such as automotive mechanics or information technology, with most lasting about 10 weeks. Both public and private institutions are eligible, and the average student is expected to receive between $1,000 and $3,000, though details haven’t been finalized.
The new grants are part of a national, bipartisan push to further align higher education with the needs of employers, but the results are sometimes lacking.
In 2024, CalMatters investigated how California’s job centers used federal money to help low-income and unemployed adults attend short-term job training programs at for-profit colleges. Thousands of dollars in public subsidies went to those schools to train truck drivers and nursing assistants — careers that have a reputation for low wages, poor working conditions or high turnover rates.
Some of these for-profit schools were under investigation for various violations when they enrolled students. CalMatters found that the majority of truck driving schools had effectively no oversight. Some nursing assistants were making less than $30,000 after graduating.
The new Pell grants for short-term job training programs come with federal regulations aimed to ensure that graduates earn wages above the poverty line in an in-demand career and that only certain kinds of verified schools will be eligible. California is considering state legislation that would further restrict the kinds of programs that could qualify.
Since neither the state nor the federal government rigorously track these short-term job training programs, it’s not clear how many exist and how many students could ultimately benefit. Experts say that California’s community college students could be among the primary recipients, since the state’s 116 community colleges already offer numerous short-term job training programs in the skilled trades, healthcare, technology and public safety. But in an email to CalMatters, the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office said it is too early to provide any estimates.
For one approximation, Gonzales points to CalGrant C, which provides state funding to students in job training programs that last at least 15 weeks. This year, roughly 225,000 students were potentially eligible. But unlike the new Pell grants, which could lead to billions in federal spending, CalGrant C has a relatively small budget, serving just under 7,800 students a year.
Are workforce investments paying off?
In southern San Diego County, many community college students are working full-time jobs but are still unable to afford their living expenses, said Mark Sanchez, the president of Southwestern College in Chula Vista. Many students — including U.S. citizens — are “transitory,” he said, meaning that they live in Tijuana, where the cost of housing is cheaper, and cross the U.S. border for school each day because they can’t afford living in California.
Sanchez has been advocating for the new Pell grants, arguing to state and local officials that they could create a pathway for his students to get higher-paying jobs. His staff estimated roughly 1,500 students could be eligible for the grants in about 50 different programs, ranging from musicianship to accounting.
For students to qualify, schools will need to work over time with the state and federal government to prove that at least 70% of graduates of these job training programs are employed and that their wages are higher than the federal poverty line. The data is scattered and hard to track, and in some cases, information isn’t collected at all, said Su Jin Jez, the chief executive of California Competes, an education nonprofit.
State data can tell you, for instance, that a college graduate is working for a school district and how much they make, but the data can’t tell you what they’re doing at the school, such as whether they’re a teacher, a secretary, a lawyer or a janitor, said Jez. “Our state puts billions into aligning higher education and workforce and we don’t have a good way to understand if these investments are paying off.”
California Competes is sponsoring two bills in the Legislature this year, including one by Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, a Napa Democrat, that will require state workforce agencies to collect more data. The other is by Assemblymember Jacqui Irwin, a Thousand Oaks Democrat, and will regulate which programs can qualify for the new short-term Pell grants. For the latter bill, Assemblymember Juan Alanis, a Modesto Republican, is a co-author and The Institute for College Access & Success is a co-sponsor.
Separately, the governor’s office has written emergency legislation that contains proposed regulations for the new Pell grants. Though the California Student Aid Commission can’t take positions on bills, Gonzales has openly praised the bill by Irwin and criticized the governor’s proposal saying it “risks creating a fragmented system.”
Avoiding another failure
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature created a new financial aid program, known as the Learning-Aligned Employment Program, which was supposed to give out millions in financial aid to working students to help them secure jobs related to their program of study.
The program was a failure, said Gonzales, who was the deputy chancellor of the community college system at the time. It only had one-time funding and a three-year window to succeed, she said. “What was deeply missing….was the professional development and the technical assistance. You can’t just introduce a new tool, and then say, ‘Students apply.’”
By the end of the three-year window, few students had applied and state legislators decided to cut the program. In an emailed statement to CalMatters, Nicole Kangas, a spokesperson for the student aid commission, said the Learning-Aligned Employment Program is a warning for the new Pell grants.
The expanded Pell grants were approved last summer, but the U.S. Education Department only finalized its regulations last month, giving states less than two months to roll it out before the July 1 start date. Now California officials and colleges have a long list of regulatory and administrative tasks to complete, including creating special agreements between the state and each of its college districts and universities. When the California Student Aid Commission created similar agreements with universities for the Middle Class Scholarship, the contracts were between 60 and 120 pages long and took about nine months to finalize, said Gonzales.
“We really are behind,” she said, adding that multiple other states have already passed legislation. Certain new regulations, such as Irwin’s bill, could give the state “an opportunity to catch up,” she said.
For Sanchez, the challenge is not just administrative. Once the new Pell grants are available, he said Southwestern College still needs to inform current and potential students that these grants exist and convince them to apply.
Even though the majority of community college students are struggling financially — including some who are homeless — many aren’t aware of financial aid, are hesitant to apply or they submit incomplete applications. Less than half of all community college students applied for financial aid last year, and state data shows that even fewer ultimately received it.
