As Workforce Pell continues to roll out across the country, state agencies and colleges are still grappling with major questions: How can they decide and prove which programs qualify? How can they judge the marketplace value of those programs?

The National Accreditation Commission has emerged as a potential answer to those pressing questions.

NAC is seeking recognition to become a programmatic accreditor specializing in the short-term, noncredit programs at the heart of the Workforce Pell expansion. Four years since its founding, the upstart agency has a notable list of partners including the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities and Idaho State University, which is piloting its accreditation model.

Idaho State turned to NAC as it began wrestling with how its programs might fit into Workforce Pell, says Matt Freeman, associate officer for the university’s Albion Institute, which manages the development and delivery of career-focused nondegree programs. While Idaho State offers more than three dozen workforce training programs eligible for Idaho Launch, it wasn’t clear which of those would meet federal and state requirements for the Pell program. 

Freeman, who also is a NWCCU commissioner, says that the mapping services NAC offers set it apart from other potential partners. 

The commission has a tool, AIHub, that not only ingests program information like the curriculum and skills associated with each training but also analyzes local labor trends within a 50-mile radius to identify whether there is workforce demand for each training program. That mapping, for example, helps ensure that students coming out of a phlebotomy training program have nearby opportunities for clinical placements and ultimately jobs in the field, says Rebecca Busacca, founder and president of NAC. 

For Idaho State, the AIHub took what Freeman says would historically have been an “overwhelming task” and made it doable. John Louviere, Idaho State’s chief officer for online enterprise and extended learning, says the tool has helped it analyze the potential of short-term programs beyond whether they’ll qualify for Workforce Pell.

“I never would have thought we would use an accreditation framework or body to help us with business viability or go-to-market strategy,” he says. 

A New Type of Programmatic Accreditor

NAC was not a response to Pell expansion, Busacca says. Her interest in noncredit training programs dates back 15 years, but recent investments from tech companies and foundations—including OpenAI, Anthropic, GitLab Foundation, and the Ballmer Group—finally made it possible for the commission to create a tech platform to streamline the evaluation process across hundreds of short-term programs. 

That evaluation helps institutions and states with risk mitigation, especially given the regulations covering Workforce Pell expansion. 

States quickly found that despite the excitement for Workforce Pell, few programs qualified initially. The program officially launched in July, but as of last week, only 30 programs in seven states have received federal approval, according to tracking by Opportunity Data.

The federal government’s 70-70 test, which requires programs to achieve at least a 70% completion rate and a 70% job-placement rate, has slowed rollout across the U.S. In Virginia, a national leader in supporting short-term programs, the community college system expected only six of its 600 workforce programs to qualify for Workforce Pell without major changes. The North Carolina Community College System found that less than 1% of its 50K short-term programs meet these qualifications.

Bruno Manno, senior advisor at the Progressive Policy Institute, says this bottleneck has encouraged states to take a more methodical approach to implementation. If states move too quickly, they risk certifying programs that will fail the 70-70 test. 

“From a practical point of view,” he says, “I think it’s better to be cautious on this sort of stuff.” 

However, traditional accreditors aren’t equipped to evaluate most of these programs. Selena Grace, president of the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, says the accreditor decided to partner with NAC in large part because it offers a complementary service to NWCCU’s core mission. Institutional accreditors have a limited bandwidth, and due to that, the agency’s focus is on for-credit programs. 

While NWCCU has long worked alongside programmatic accreditors, its partnership with NAC can help noncredit programs to lead into credit-based learning—a requirement for such programs to qualify for Workforce Pell. Additionally, NAC can offer insights into program outcomes, which is becoming more of a focal point across higher education. 

“Everybody is making more informed decisions,” Grace says, “not just decisions based on a hunch.” 

NAC’s entrance also coincides with a broader shift in the accreditation landscape. The Department of Education is actively encouraging new agencies to enter the marketplace, and new guidance allows institutions to shop freely for new accreditors. 

Grace says the current environment requires accreditors like NWCCU to set aside historical norms, and its partnership with NAC is one such example. 

Looking ahead, Busacca says she sees NAC accrediting not just colleges and universities, but organizations outside the traditional higher education space. She points to the defense industrial base sector as a space for growth, especially with the U.S. Navy estimating that its suppliers will need 250K skilled workers over the next decade to scale the production of submarines and other vessels.

Voluntary Accountability

For now, the federal government doesn’t require programmatic accreditation for workforce training. In Idaho State’s case, it chose to participate in the NAC pilot in part because it was able to secure state funding for the project, Louviere says. In return, Idaho State promised to share data collected by NAC with current and potential students. That will allow them to see not only what skills are mapped to each training program, but also the market saturation of the fields associated with each program. 

“I don’t think we could have done it five years ago,” Louviere says. 

The process has led NAC to push back on whether some programs at Idaho State should exist as is, based on outputs from its AIHub, Busacca says. When the system takes into account programs offered at other institutions, for example, it may determine there is too much overlap. 

“ISU has accepted that some programs need work, that they need to make changes,” she says. “The AIHub does that a lot.” 

University leaders say the process is helping the institution to scale its workforce training offerings efficiently and responsibly. And Freeman predicts that this constant evaluation, even if not federally mandated, will enhance the marketability of Idaho State’s offerings. 

“It’s a signal to students and the marketplace that these are quality programs,” he says, “and we felt like this was important.”