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Negotiators reach consensus on Workforce Pell Grant rules; Department commits to publish performance data
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Summary
Department of Education negotiators reached consensus on draft Workforce Pell Grant regulations after reviewing redlines and adding changes on certification, placement metrics, exemptions and data sharing. The department committed to publish program performance data —as soon as practicable— and to pose directed operational questions in the rule'making preamble.
Negotiators for the U.S. Department of Education's Workforce Pell Grant rulemaking reached consensus on a comprehensive draft text after a final-day review of departmental redlines, the department said. The committee's facilitators circulated corrections and updated language; negotiators then held a single consensus check in which each constituency reported a thumbs-up or a nonblocking sideways vote.
The department's lead negotiator, David Musser, walked the committee through several notable changes the department added in response to comments, including: requiring governors to document consideration of program cost relative to anticipated wages when certifying eligible workforce programs; adding 6-digit Classification of Instructional Programs (CIP) and Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) codes to certification materials; requiring public posting of interstate (bilateral) agreements between governors; and including data-sharing provisions in those bilateral agreements so states can calculate completion and placement rates consistently.
Musser also said the department corrected typos in the draft, changed language so the secretary —shall collect any such liability from the institution— where value-added earnings calculations trigger liability, and adopted a federal-agency CIP/SOC crosswalk requirement to limit the scope of loss-of-eligibility rules for substantially similar programs.
Negotiators pressed the department on several operational points. Student negotiators and state representatives asked whether governors or institutions should bear responsibility for anticipating program wages; the department characterized the governor requirement as documentation of factors states already consider and emphasized flexibility in implementation. Institutions and proprietary representatives raised multiple concerns about multi-campus and employer-site reporting requirements and the practical limits of using FAFSA addresses as the proxy for student location; the department acknowledged limitations and said it would pose directed questions and include clarifying preamble language.
The committee also adopted explicit exemptions to the completion and placement calculations for individuals called into uniformed service or who become incarcerated, language the department revised to reference assignment to the uniform services (including Title 10 or 32) for periods of more than 30 days.
Facilitator Kayla Mac recorded the consensus check into the record; representatives across students, veterans, employers, legal aid, public colleges, private nonprofit, proprietary institutions, state workforce, state grant, state higher education, accrediting agencies and taxpayers indicated support or nonblocking agreement. David Musser told the group the department will provide the clean "bride" text to negotiators if consensus is confirmed and will raise directed operational questions in the preamble and in subsequent notices.
Undersecretary Nicholas Kent, addressing the group after the consensus check, thanked negotiators and previewed the next session's focus on a broader accountability framework. "We will have a new accountability system by July 1," Kent said.
Next steps announced by the department include issuance of a clean draft reflecting agreed edits for negotiator review, publication of directed questions to gather operational input (for example on student-location and multi-campus treatment), and a preamble commitment to publish Workforce Pell Grant performance data as soon as operationally feasible. The committee will reconvene for a final session next month to complete the rulemaking work on accountability.
