Career Education Without College

Details emerge for Trump’s vision of a more coordinated federal education and workforce system. But critics say those moves would add confusion and inefficiency, as well as a painful $400M cut to community colleges. Also, a new Senate version of workforce Pell. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Subscribe here.)

Moving CTE Grants to the Labor Department

The Trump administration has taken steps toward moving the administration of career and technical education funds to the Labor Department from the Education Department, which it is seeking to dismantle. The administration also says it wants to limit federal CTE funding to K-12 schools, eliminating roughly $400M in annual support for those programs at two-year colleges and area CTE centers.

Some of that federal action emerged this week in a court filing related to preliminary injunctions won by blue states in legal challenges to the breaking up of the Education Department. The filing cited a previously undisclosed interagency agreement signed by the two departments last month.

The filing from the Education Department lays out the administration’s vision for a “coordinated federal education and workforce system,” one that would be consistent with an executive order President Trump signed in April.

Under the agreement, the department would move the administration of CTE grant funds under the Carl D. Perkins Career and Technical Education Act to the Labor Department. That funding stream historically has been managed by the Education Department’s Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education.

Benefits from such a move, according to filing, would include helping students and workers upskill in response to a rapidly evolving job market, providing more clarity about alternative credentials, and improving performance reporting.

During a presentation this week at Jobs for the Future’s annual meeting, two federal officials briefly addressed the administration’s plan to merge certain workforce and education programs. 

The two departments are working with Congress to make a case for the integration of CTE and the public workforce system, said Nick Moore, whom the administration has appointed to be deputy assistant secretary for career, technical, and adult education.

“CTE and WIOA programs are aligned by design,” he said. 

The Trump administration is finally moving on “unifying actions” many workforce and education pros in the room have called for in the past, said Taylor Stockton, the Labor Department’s chief innovation officer. That coordination will create “more unified support on how individuals have access to opportunities for economic mobility.”

A stronger focus on results will be part of the reorganization, he said, with AI adding to the urgency.

“We have to focus on models that are really delivering for workers and learners,” said Stockton.

Critical Response: ACTE and Advance CTE, two nonprofits focused on career and technical education, strongly oppose the Trump administration’s plan. The groups said the move would threaten the integrity of CTE while adding confusion and inefficiency.

“The Perkins Act and the CTE programs it supports are not merely job training programs,” they said. “These programs are comprehensive educational and career preparation programs that prepare secondary and postsecondary learners for lifelong success by connecting academic and technical learning with the real world skills that learners need to thrive.”

The funding streams are aimed at different populations of learners than those typically served by Labor Department programs, according to the two groups. Many states use Perkins funds for wraparound supports or structural improvements. In Texas, for example, the grants have supported projects like coaching single parents in technical programs at Amarillo College and bridging noncredit and credit pathways at South Texas College.

“Ultimately, such a move would reduce long-term opportunities for learners and the overall effectiveness of CTE programs and add, rather than reduce, administrative burden on states and local CTE stakeholders,” ACTE and Advance CTE said.

No More College Funding: The federal government spends roughly $1.45B each year through the Perkins Act. The budget proposal from the White House would largely keep that funding level intact next year.

However, the administration has called for the elimination of all money for community colleges under Perkins—at least $400M annually. The budget would “reprioritize” those CTE grants, requiring that states use that funding exclusively to support middle and high school students.

“After years of shuffling Americans through an economically unproductive postsecondary system, the request supports refocusing young Americans on career preparation,” the Education Department said in its budget document.

Support for colleges would be provided elsewhere, the department said, including through short-term Pell Grants. (Congress is mulling whether to open up Pell to programs that can be completed in eight to 15 weeks. More on that proposal below.)

One of the strengths of Perkins is that it supports both K-12 and postsecondary education, which is unusual for a federal program, says Braden Goetz, a senior policy advisor at New America who worked at the Education Department for 26 years.

“Middle and high school students benefit from the inclusion of postsecondary education in Perkins,” he says. “For example, the dual-enrollment programs that are so popular today originated with the secondary-postsecondary partnership that has been part of federal CTE legislation for more than 60 years.”

State CTE grants under Perkins support both K-12 students and adults who are looking to update their skills, says Carrie Warick-Smith, vice president of public policy at the Association of Community College Trustees.

“Excluding community colleges from those funding streams, without replacing them with other sources, would be detrimental to our students who have already exited high school and still wish to pursue technical training,” she says.

Moore struck an optimistic note at JFF, saying that the administration is seeking partners across workforce education. He also said “very appreciable policies” are in the works.

The Kicker: “Stand with us,” he said. “Give us an opportunity to work with you.”

Pell Grant Changes

The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Tuesday released its plans for workforce Pell and other higher education reforms under the massive spending and domestic policy bill. Workforce Pell appeared largely unchanged from the House version.

However, in a significant departure, the Senate’s plan would not bar students who attend college less than half-time from receiving Pell Grants. It also would keep the threshold for full-time status at 12 hours per semester, rather than increasing it to 15 hours, as proposed by the House.

Those provisions have been major concerns for community colleges, where many students take only one or two courses at a time while working or juggling family responsibilities. The American Association of Community Colleges estimated that the eligibility changes would have reduced or eliminated the grant for more than 1M students at its colleges. —By Elyse Ashburn

Related Coverage

Open Tabs

College Completion
The number of working-age adults with some college but no degree grew to 37.6M at the start of the 2023–24 academic year, according to the latest data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. That’s up almost 800K, or 2.2%, from the previous year. However, the number of students stopping out of college declined for the second year in a row, and 42 states and D.C. saw re-enrollment increase—just not enough to fully offset new stop-outs.

Short-Term Boom
Enrollment in short-term programs at California’s community colleges has grown dramatically in the past few years—hitting 82K full-time-equivalent students in 2023–24. That’s well above pre-pandemic highs, according to reporting by Michael Burke of EdSource. Burke zeroed in on Mt. San Antonio College, which has added 48 new short-term, career-oriented programs in the past five years, with a heavy focus on medical fields. About 83% of students complete.

AI Readiness
The AI Education Project and the Burning Glass Institute will use $1M from Salesforce to examine how AI is reshaping the labor market and to translate those findings into a road map for K-12 schools. The partnership will begin with research from BGI on how AI is changing the skills required across a wide range of industries. Drawing on that research, aiEDU will outline essential components of AI readiness and literacy, updating its AI Readiness Framework.

Engineer Shortfall
The world’s need for power, especially that of the U.S., is outstripping the engineering workforce to build it, Bloomberg reports. The U.S. is already unable to fill about a third of the 400K new engineering jobs it creates each year, and electricians, concrete pourers, and other skilled workers also are increasingly hard for utilities, data centers, and battery companies to find. The Trump administration’s campaign against international students and immigrants is likely to increase the shortfall, Bloomberg reports.

Job Moves
Casey Sacks has been appointed senior policy advisor on workforce and AI at the U.S. Department of Education. The president of West Virginia’s BridgeValley Community and Technical College, Sacks was deputy assistant secretary for community colleges during the first Trump administration.

Jason Delisle has been appointed chief economist and senior advisor at the Education Department. Delisle is a nonresident senior fellow at the Urban Institute and previously worked at New America and the American Enterprise Institute.

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