Earlier this year, negotiators reached a consensus on higher education accountability and a long-needed government transparency framework. With it, we now share a reasonable expectation that covers all fields of higher education: Our graduates will earn at least the same as a high school graduate four years after completing one of our programs. We also have new opportunities to partner with our governors’ workforce development boards to expand and build mid-skills pathways eligible for short-term Workforce Pell grants.
As the chief negotiator representing community colleges and universities on the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell committee, I was impressed by the thoughtfulness of the federal negotiator, Department of Education and Labor officials, and other interviewees. We appreciate the nature of this period and the need for a framework robust enough to provide a predictable way for colleges to better plan, budget and serve students.
We also saw that rural students and rural communities face unique challenges that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) cannot address. The proposed legislation raised some of these challenges while highlighting the need for Congress to think more deliberately about rural skills development and attraction. Here are some of the challenges that merit federal action.
- Rural communities are small. Most rural programs enroll as few as 12 students. Statistically, this means that high school programs at institutions serving rural areas tend to have cohort sizes too small to report the required outcome data with privacy protections. During the hearings, the Western Interstate Commission on Higher Education shared preliminary internal analysis showing that programs in the most rural states of the West were more likely than those in less rural areas to have enrollment sizes too small to be included in the Department of Education’s assigned income sample tests.
A similar problem of scale makes the 70 percent employment requirement in the new Workforce Pell program more flexible for rural providers. The new draft rules provide for group pooling over multiple years, but even after a few years, the pool may be too small. At this point, accountability requirements will not apply. Rural students, institutions and taxpayers need more ways to define return on investment and make informed decisions about programs that need to be upgraded, closed or upgraded. If this oversight is not addressed, rural students will be left out of this life-changing opportunity through design.
- Regional salaries are low. Average wages in rural communities are 20 to 25 percent below the national average. Programs can fail the income test in both the Workforce Pell and OBBBA accountability frameworks even when they lead to good jobs. Virginia, home to my interviewer representing public institutions of higher education, Randy Stamper of the Virginia Community College System, provides a graphic example: The commonwealth is home to some of the highest-income and lowest-income states in America. The per capita income in Arlington is over $90,000. On the other end of the spectrum, Buckingham County’s is only about $30,000. The federal FastForward program is designed to serve the needs of local workers, and naturally graduates of FastForward programs will earn different salaries depending on where they live in the commonwealth. The statewide limit on benefits assessment ignores these local differences. Without rural wage adjustments, important federal financial aid resources are at risk for financially vulnerable students and institutions serving rural areas. In this way, well-intentioned protections exclude rural students.
- Limited employer density. In fact, the employer’s involvement in the postsecondary pathway is always valued in the labor market. However, it may be a hindrance due to the density of tenants. In most rural counties, one hospital or one manufacturer dominates the labor market, while small businesses make up about 85 percent of facilities and 54 percent of workers. Therefore, many rural employers have limited capacity to hire additional workers, and students often cross state and county boundaries to work. These restrictions require close coordination between the campus offering the training and the employer partner to ensure that the recruitment times and programs offered are compatible.
Intermediate skills gaps are large in rural communities. Without post-secondary financial options, rural communities will lack the education and training backbone to survive, let alone thrive. Middle-skilled workers power local growth. Child care providers, certified nursing assistants, phlebotomists, EKG technicians, emergency medicine technicians and medical billing staff support rural health systems, while machinists, welders, maintenance technicians, quality technicians and drivers build, maintain and move the infrastructure and products the economy depends on. This backbone in rural communities will need to include the delivery of local high schools, extension networks of land-grant universities, non-profit organizations and other providers and courses currently ineligible for federal loans or Pell Grants.
The importance of strong rural postsecondary pathways is a 50-state problem. Whether it’s through the painfully overdue reauthorization of the Higher Education Act or a clear rural skills development and attraction law, the next reforms and investments are needed to support state leadership.
- Accessibility. States need waiver authority to pool resources from federal agency sources to provide financial packages that make programs “more affordable” for rural students.
- Program performance. Countries also need flexible financing to promote the development and expansion of medium- and sustainable-skills pathways, which are needed. This includes paying for student acceleration tools and current Pell regulations that prohibit or limit payments, including prior learning assessments, work-based learning stipends, dual enrollment in high school and addressing the academic skills gap. It also includes funds to increase the research capacity of small rural institutes.
- Accountability design. Allowances for cross-county, cross-state and remote employment of rural finishers in the new accountability framework.
- Authorization flexibility. In particular, allow and clarify the temporary approval of new and emerging rural programs that do not have the necessary historical data.
- Data infrastructure. Invest in long-term data systems linked to improved unemployment insurance earnings records. Our rural challenges can be understood and improved, but not without more granular data.
As the implementation of OBBBA moves from policy to practice, success should not only be measured by speed and scale, but by who is able to participate and benefit.
Rural communities are important to the functioning of the nation and strengthening the economy. If the goal is accountability, then guidelines must be implemented in ways that recognize rural realities—limited program density, long travel distances, small employers and few training providers—so that quality standards do not become unintentional barriers to participation and success. With smart monitoring and flexible rural information, Workforce Pell can fulfill its promise to students and taxpayers and ensure that opportunity reaches every ZIP code. Accountability without condemnation should be the standard.
