Starting July 1, short-term workforce training programs will become eligible for Pell grants for the first time. Workforce Pell will extend federal aid to students in state-approved, short-term programs that offer education in high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand industry sectors or jobs. They mark one of the most significant expansions of Pell grants to date.

For the 1.1 million people incarcerated in state prisons, Workforce Pell’s short-term format could open real opportunities. But to realize this possibility, policymakers need to formulate guidelines in a way that recognizes the unique challenges of offering programs to people in prison. I propose three rule changes that would not undermine program quality, but rather would improve the program’s fairness so more participants could benefit.

The need for workforce programming in prisons

Pell is not new to prisons. Second Chance Pell began piloting access for incarcerated students in 2015, enrolling more than 40,000 students through 2022, and Congress restored full eligibility for approved prison education programs in 2023. But those pathways cover traditional postsecondary credentials, such as associate and bachelor’s degrees, which can be tough to complete before being released to the community.

Workforce Pell is different. It opens federal aid to short-term, credential-focused training. The short duration of these programs better fits prison realities, and their focus on workforce alignment supports effective reentry. Unlike traditional Pell, Workforce Pell is also available to those who have already earned a bachelor’s degree, which benefits those who need to reskill before returning home.

Research shows postsecondary education behind bars is associated with lower recidivism and better postrelease employment. And incarcerated people in Urban’s Prison Research and Innovation Initiative (PRII) say there is strong, unmet need for programming: 58 percent say they do not have access to activities promoting well-being and growth, and 79 percent say their prison does a poor job preparing people for release.

Would Workforce Pell work in prisons?

The downside is that Workforce Pell’s accountability framework in the US Department of Education’s recently proposed rule wasn’t designed with prisons in mind. Whether these benefits reach incarcerated people will depend on how this framework is finalized.

Prison-based programs should be able to meet the structural requirements (150 to 599 clock hours over 8 to 15 weeks, leading to a stackable, portable credential aligned with in-demand occupations). But Workforce Pell requires programs to meet three additional provisions:

1. maintain a 70 percent graduation rate
2. place 70 percent of graduates in jobs within six months
3. generate value-added earnings for graduates that exceed program tuition and fees

All three are shaped by institutional and labor market conditions that lie largely outside an educator’s control, and programs that fall short lose access to federal aid. The following realities about prison operations could present challenges to meeting these provisions:

• Programming delays. Prison-based programs routinely contend with staff shortages and security issues that force facility lockdowns, which can pause instruction for days or weeks at a time. The delays may dilute program quality, decreasing job placement and graduation rates.
• Transfers and releases. Some state prison systems do not consider a person’s enrollment status when making decisions about transfers, potentially disrupting a student’s progress because security or logistics concerns led to their transfer to another facility. In many states, release dates can be complicated. Students may enroll in a program expecting to complete it before leaving but find their release date is moved up. Both dynamics reduce graduation rates.
• Internet access. The industry-aligned, credentialed training required by Workforce Pell is hard to deliver without internet access, which remains heavily restricted in state prisons. Students who aren’t trained on online tools may have trouble competing for jobs once released.
• Safety. Prison climate—especially safety and staff-prisoner relationships—can also shape whether incarcerated people engage with education and training programs. When people are navigating persistent threats to their physical and psychological well-being, deep engagement in workforce training seems harder to sustain. In our PRII study, two-thirds of participants disagreed that staff made them feel safe, and roughly the same share said they did not feel safe raising concerns with staff.
• Labor market barriers. People returning from prison face labor market barriers that depress wages independent of training quality. A program could deliver excellent, well-aligned instruction and still fail to meet the earnings test because of the collateral consequences of a conviction.

With modifications, Workforce Pell could better accommodate prison realities

Incarcerated people have much to gain from Workforce Pell, but as the rules are currently written, they will likely miss out on its benefits. Corrections-based programs are already expensive to stand up and operate, with costs that often exceed what tuition alone can cover, making eligibility for Pell benefits even more important. Providers that cannot reliably hit 70 percent completion and placement rates, or clear the earnings bar, will lose Pell eligibility. Many may simply decline to offer programs inside prisons in the first place. The incarcerated students who would most benefit from workforce training could never see it.

Three final rule changes could close most of this gap.

1. The completion and placement cohorts should exclude students whose progress was interrupted by transfers, releases, or extended lockdowns.
2. The 6-month placement clock should start at release rather than program completion, and extend to 12 months to reflect the realities of reentry.
3. The value-added earnings test should compare formerly incarcerated graduates to formerly incarcerated nonparticipants in the same labor market, isolating program effect from the wage penalty that follows a conviction regardless of training quality.

More than 400,000 people return home from state prisons each year, and employers across in-demand sectors—including health care, skilled trades, and logistics and advanced manufacturing—face persistent talent shortages. A Workforce Pell rule that actually works inside prisons would send tens of thousands of credentialed, job-ready workers into those sectors annually. And if these provisions are incorporated from the outset, they will be baked into the substantial new data infrastructure that most states will need to develop to approve and oversee programs. 

These adjustments would not lower the bar. They would apply the bar fairly to programs operating in a context that wasn’t considered when the accountability framework was designed. Without them, Workforce Pell’s most transformative promise—short-term, credential-focused training that actually fits the time people have inside—will stop at the prison gate.