Third Way Statement on Short-Term Pell Legislation

WASHINGTON—Third Way released the following statement from Lanae Erickson, Senior Vice President for Social Policy, Education & Politics:

“Students and taxpayers deserve to know that when they’re investing in higher education, the program has the potential to pay off. Unfortunately, we already fund countless programs at thousands of institutions that don’t meet that basic test. Any conversation about expanding federal funding to even more programs must start with the premise that they must be able to prove they’ll leave those they enroll better off.

“One important way to protect students from wasting their time and taxpayers’ money is to require programs to show that those who complete them reliably go on to outearn a high school graduate. A high school earnings threshold is a popular, intuitive value metric that aligns with students’ fair expectation that they will be better off after attending a postsecondary program than if they’d never enrolled.

“The inclusion of a high school earnings threshold in the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act is a welcome recognition that post-college earnings matter to students. Opening access to Pell Grants for unproven, super-short training programs comes with risks, and we hope to see the high school earnings test maintained and other quality assurance guardrails added and strengthened in ongoing negotiations, including the exclusion of for-profit and online programs from eligibility.”