This story about Arizona’s Workforce Pell applications was produced by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, an independent nonprofit newsroom dedicated to statewide investigative reporting, and Open Campus, a national nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education. Sign up for the AZCIR newsletter and Open Campus’ The Dispatch.
Last summer, Congress expanded Pell grants to cover short-term workforce training for the first time, promising a new way for low-income students to afford the skills they need to get high-demand, high-wage jobs.
It was a change Amanda Abens had been waiting for.
The Pima Community College assistant vice chancellor had spent years helping the school build career training programs and hoping they would one day be eligible for Pell grants, the country’s largest source of federal financial aid for postsecondary students. She thought about a dozen programs would qualify for the Workforce Pell initiative, which Trump administration officials sold as a tool for “revitalizing the American dream.”
Those programs included certificates in fields like healthcare and construction, where Arizona is struggling to find enough workers. But after navigating steep requirements and what Abens described as a “painful” application process for state approval, Pima put forward just one.
“Frankly, what the feds came out with really has a lot of challenges to it,” Abens said. “It is far from perfect.”
Across Arizona, colleges and trade schools viewed Workforce Pell as a way to make short-term training more affordable and give employers a larger pool of workers for jobs that don’t require a two- or four-year degree. But Congress left implementation to the states while pushing for a quick launch. The U.S. Department of Education didn’t release final rules until May 2026—less than two months before states could begin seeking federal approval.
Arizona also had to establish its own application for schools before the federal government would consider their programs.
As school administrators worked through the process, they found far fewer programs qualified than expected. Initially, administrators statewide flagged 60-plus programs they believed could qualify this year, according to records reviewed by AZCIR. By the late August deadline, they’d submitted just nine for state approval.
Of those, the Workforce Arizona Council last week approved one program each from Eastern Arizona College, Pima Medical Institute and HDS Truck Driving Institute to advance to the federal Education Department for final certification, the last step before students can use the money to cover their tuition. Council leaders said state staff are working with the other six programs that were not considered this month to resolve issues with their applications, which could make them eligible for approval when the council meets again in November.
AZCIR contacted 20 community colleges—historically one of the primary providers of workforce programs nationwide—along with trade schools and universities across the state to understand how they approached the process, from the state’s call for interest through the first round of applications. More than half of those that responded said strict federal parameters, an accelerated rollout or both forced them to drastically scale back their plans to participate, at least for now.
The result is a limited set of eligible training programs in a state projected to need more than 180,000 skilled workers by 2034. Gov. Katie Hobbs’ administration has spent millions on initiatives aimed at meeting industry needs and boosting the workforce, but Arizona still doesn’t produce enough qualified people to fill those roles, according to research from Helios Education Foundation and Arizona State University.
“(Workforce Pell) is not going to be the panacea I think some people had maybe hoped for. Our priority is focusing on quality over quantity, and I think most states are taking that approach.”
Erin Hart, GovERNOR’s policy adviser on higher education
“(Workforce Pell) is not going to be the panacea I think some people had maybe hoped for,” Erin Hart, the governor’s policy adviser on higher education, said at a May Workforce Arizona Council meeting. “Our priority is focusing on quality over quantity, and I think most states are taking that approach.”
The push to allow Pell grants to cover workforce training began more than a decade ago, when advocates argued aid had “not kept up with rapidly changing demands of the 21st century economy.”
Since then, students have continued to pursue faster pathways to employment. In Arizona, just 50% of graduates enroll in college within a year of completing high school, with many citing high costs and the uncertain value of a college degree.
After Congress approved the Pell expansion last summer, the Education Department estimated the workforce-specific grants could reach 190,000 students, at a cost of more than $300 million annually. Congress provided no additional funding to help states and schools implement the expansion, even as it imposed a long list of requirements.
To be eligible, programs must prepare students for a “high-skill, high-wage or in-demand” occupation, run for eight to 15 weeks and have been offered for at least a year. They must meet local employers’ hiring needs, serve as a prerequisite to further education and eventually show that graduates earn enough to meet federal income requirements.
The programs must also demonstrate success. At least 70% of students must complete them and find employment.
Meeting those standards requires sophisticated data, which state leaders have called a “heavy lift.” One college told AZCIR it decided against submitting its phlebotomy program because of concerns about the manpower needed to compile the data.
“I think it really is, ‘Let’s give a set of really obscure directions to the states (and) see how they pull it together,’” said Kevin LaMountain, a member of Gov. Katie Hobbs’ Workforce Pell implementation group and head of Arizona’s private and vocational school licensing board.
At Cochise College in southeastern Arizona, federal eligibility rules quickly disqualified one of the school’s more sought-after workforce programs: a four-week commercial driver’s license course.
The same accelerated timeline that makes the program attractive to students also makes it ineligible for Workforce Pell, according to Cullen Scarborough, dean of workforce development and military programs. He called the eight-week minimum “an arbitrary temporal barrier” in a public comment to the state.
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“Why hinder somebody who’s meeting all the requirements, that is an accredited program that leads to an industry-recognized certificate that changes lives?” Scarborough told AZCIR.
Cochise ultimately submitted no programs for state approval, despite identifying two others that officials thought would qualify. The timeline was too tight to pull together everything needed to meet the application’s “massive requirements,” Scarborough said.
“We don’t want to just slap something together and then get denied in round one when we have everything ready for round two,” he said.
Nicholas Kent, the Education Department’s under secretary, acknowledged the program’s extensive guardrails, saying in June that “we’ve never seen a financial aid program with as much accountability built in as this one.” He argued the requirements are necessary to ensure approved programs achieve what they claim to accomplish for students and communities.
The U.S. Education Department did not answer multiple requests for comment, and its timeline for reviewing state-certified Workforce Pell programs remains unclear. As of Sept. 21, the federal government had only announced five programs with full approval nationwide.
Eastern Arizona College, which serves about 3,600 students in Graham and Greenlee counties, was eager to be among the first to participate in Workforce Pell, according to Kevin Peck, who oversaw the school’s application.
Peck expected 11 programs to be eligible, but as he and his team evaluated the requirements, they realized only the college’s commercial driver’s license program “was a natural fit.”
From summer 2023 through summer 2025, 91% of enrolled students completed the trucking course and received their credential, according to the college’s application for state certification.
Eastern Arizona was one of four community colleges and three trade schools that submitted the nine programs for state approval, a significant drop from the 18 institutions that originally indicated interest.
Arizona Western College and Mohave College, both rural community colleges, each put two programs forward. Pima Medical Institute, Pima Community College, Pure Aesthetics Natural Skincare School and HDS Truck Driving Institute each submitted one.
Three of the nine programs were for emergency medical or phlebotomy technicians, training workers to fill roles in healthcare, Arizona’s most in-demand industry. Three others were for commercial driver’s license programs, with the rest covering firefighter certificates, an aesthetics instructor license and an HVAC assistant certificate.
David Borofsky, who leads the Arizona Community College Coordinating Council, told AZCIR he was “not surprised” by the low number of applications. The council advocates for the state’s community college districts.
“The feds make it so difficult (to qualify) that it’s not palatable for some of the colleges”
david borofsky, arizona community college coordinating council
“The feds make it so difficult (to qualify) that it’s not palatable for some of the colleges,” he said.
Lindsey Wilson, a spokesperson for Maricopa Community College District, said officials believed fewer than 20 of the district’s 170 workforce-specific certificate programs would qualify. The district, which is the state’s largest with 10 schools, submitted none.
Yavapai College also submitted zero programs, though leaders previously signaled more than 20 might be eligible.
The college declined to comment. But during a state webinar in July, an administrator described the timeline and reporting requirements as “brutal,” noting “many moving parts to this that will require institutions to ultimately hire additional personnel just for the data piece.”
Officials from three other schools echoed those challenges, telling AZCIR that fewer data reporting requirements and more flexibility would help more programs qualify, more students benefit and more jobs get filled.
“I understand the need for data and to analyze where we’re spending the money, but currently, it’s problematic to track (program) completers and where they go from here,” said Mark Maciha, dean of career and technical education at Coconino Community College in Flagstaff. The college was interested in submitting its nursing assistant and emergency medical programs but ended up submitting none.
Maciha said Coconino may apply in the future as it explores expanding its short-term offerings. It skipped this round because “it didn’t make sense to rearrange academic programs to fit the constraints of Workforce Pell.”
Kent, the under secretary of education, acknowledged in June that, as with any large aid program, there will likely be “tinkering” as officials look at what works and what doesn’t. While people are already discussing “Workforce Pell 2.0,” he noted many of the strictest requirements were mandated by Congress, making significant changes unlikely anytime soon.
In the meantime, states are moving ahead with the rules they have.
Despite receiving far fewer applications than schools initially envisioned, state officials who oversaw the process said they were pleased with the first round. They said they’d applied federal requirements strictly in hopes that programs approved by the state would clear the next level of review.
“It’s not been a small lift,” Katie Belous, with the state’s Office of Economic Opportunity, said Friday. “It is really one of those unfunded mandates that the federal government’s passing down, and I’m really proud of Arizona’s approach and coordination.”
Arizona is one of only a handful of states that have certified programs to seek federal approval. Many are still developing policies, soliciting applications and determining how best to apply federal requirements.
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Among states that have reached this stage, though, others saw broader participation. In North Carolina, 54 programs were greenlit for federal consideration across 21 colleges. Pennsylvania had 40 programs apply across 11 schools and approved two. Iowa, home to one of the few programs with final federal approval, advanced nine of 20 programs.
For now, students who might eventually benefit from Workforce Pell must find other ways to pay for their education.
Parker Harris, 21, enrolled in Pima Community College’s emergency medical technician program this fall to gain experience before beginning firefighter training next year. Pima put forward the EMT course as its sole submission for Workforce Pell.
Harris is using his savings to cover the program’s $1,640 cost while working 40 to 50 hours a week as a kitchen manager in Tucson. He noted grant support would allow him to cut back his restaurant hours and focus more on school and his future.
“I’ve taken other classes, and there’s been a couple where I ended up not even passing because I had to work so much to support myself and support going to school,” he said.
But Harris and other Pima EMT students may have to wait longer than administrators had hoped for help.
The program didn’t make it before the Workforce Arizona Council last week, after the state identified issues with its application. Abens is working to address them before the council’s November meeting but worries the delay could push back when students can begin tapping Workforce Pell funding.
Given the strict requirements schools face, she expects to see just “a little blip” of positive impact for now.
“The whole program just has not hit the mark to really make a difference in our community,” Abens said. “That’s really what it comes down to.”
Molly Bohannon is an investigative reporter covering community colleges as part of a collaboration between AZCIR and Open Campus.
