As technology reshapes the job market, states must strategically determine which community college credentials to support and scale. Workforce Pell, which expands Pell grant eligibility to short-term programs, comes with a welcome—but flawed—accountability lever.
The new provisions require states to certify that eligible programs prepare students for high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand occupations, and that graduates earn meaningfully above the poverty threshold. But earnings thresholds alone can’t make the distinctions that matter. Federal metrics cannot distinguish credentials that fail students from those that are training essential workers in occupations the market systematically undervalues. A program producing low wages due to outdated competencies looks identical, by this measure, to one training CNAs, home health aides, or early childhood educators—workers critical to functioning communities, but whom the market chronically underpays.
Without a framework that accounts for community value alongside earnings, federal policy’s earnings-first logic risks becoming the default lens through which states approve, fund, and sunset all credentials, not just those supported by Workforce Pell. That could lead states to eliminate programs their communities need most, while keeping outdated ones that happen to lead to slightly higher-paying but dead-end jobs. Instead, states need to make a distinction between low value and low pay, and, in fields with community value, invest in creating career ladders from low-wage to higher-wage jobs.
This approach can solve regional workforce shortages while delivering real economic mobility. And community colleges are the right institutions for this kind of investment.
The Distinction Federal Metrics Miss
Existing frameworks for measuring the value of a college education fall short when states must make resource allocation decisions across programs. We designed the Community College Dual-Value Framework to fill that gap. It evaluates programs across two dimensions—individual value and community benefit—and sorts them into four quadrants to help states prioritize among credentials, from noncredit certificates to transfer associate degrees to community college baccalaureate degrees.
Without a framework that accounts for community value, two very different kinds of low-earning credentials get treated the same. The first: credentials built on outdated competencies or tasks that don’t require college-level training. In our research, we encountered some short-term manufacturing certificates with little or no hands-on training that were pegged to entry-level operator and assembler roles—roles offering little advantage over a high school hire and no path forward. Neither certificate earners nor their employers saw enough value to invest in further training, so the “stackable” ladder never functioned as intended. The second: credentials training essential workers in occupations the market systematically undervalues. CNAs, home health aides, and early childhood educators require real training that is essential to quality of care and the basic functioning of communities—yet the occupations they lead to remain low-wage despite persistent demand.
Both credential types produce low-wage outcomes. But one reflects misaligned competencies; the other reflects the undervaluing of workers critical to our communities. Addressing the same outcome requires a different approach depending on which credential produced it.
Strategic Stacking Shows Promise
Stackable pathways are often promoted as the overarching answer to low-wage credentials. But research shows that true stacking—where students return for advanced training in the same field—is rare and difficult to implement.
When it works, stacking from undervalued-but-essential credentials into living-wage roles is a win for individuals, communities, and employers. Yet most alumni we interviewed found it nearly impossible to pursue further training when their initial job paid too little or demanded too much. Our research shows what it actually takes: silo-spanning program redesign so credits count toward a higher-level credential, schedules built around the lives of working adults, and state investment in tuition and wraparound support. That makes genuinely stackable pathways a resource-intensive endeavor for institutions and states alike—and it’s why states should concentrate this investment where community need is greatest.
Community colleges are the right place to direct this investment. Their mission to serve all students, their reach into rural and low-income communities, and their employer partnerships position them to build regional workforce pipelines in essential fields. Affordability is central to that case. Our analysis of institutional cost data from the California Board of Registered Nursing suggests that earning an associate degree in nursing at a California community college costs roughly nine times less than at a private institution, about $7K on average compared with roughly $68K. That gap shapes who can enroll and where graduates go next.
Interviews with employers and training providers suggest that community college nursing graduates are far more likely than their private counterparts to remain and practice in the rural and high-poverty regions where they trained, precisely the areas where shortages are most acute. Graduates who finish with little or no debt face less pressure to leave for higher-paying urban positions.
Where intentional pipelines have been built—from lower-wage incumbent hospital workers like CNAs and medical assistants into registered nursing programs — the results are striking. San Joaquin Delta College’s HOPE program retained 95% of its graduates in the Central Valley across six cohorts, substantially outperforming state averages for African American and Hispanic nurse representation. But without sustained state investment in the pipeline—from the entry-level, often sub-living-wage roles that disproportionately employ women of color up through high-wage positions like RN and radiologic technology—California’s regional shortages will persist even as community colleges sit on the infrastructure to solve them.
What States Should Do
States should use this moment to identify credentials with high community value and invest in stacking infrastructure at community colleges—which have the geographic distribution, low cost, student population, and employer partnerships that make successful pipeline scaling possible.
Early state action is already moving in this direction. Texas’s 2025 credential-of-value law (SB 1786) defines program value around a wage-based return on investment and a self-sufficiency threshold—but gives the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board explicit authority to designate credentials in education and healthcare as “credentials of value” regardless of whether they clear those wage criteria, when doing so is necessary to meet the state’s workforce needs. The provision reflects an implicit acknowledgment that some essential community functions depend on accredited, credentialed training to ensure quality of service, even when the resulting wages fall below standard thresholds.
Colorado offers an early model of what concentrated investment can look like. Through its Opportunities for Credential Attainment law (SB22-192), the state directed its higher education department to build stackable pathways in a handful of high-demand, essential fields, including early childhood education, nursing, emergency medical services, and social work alongside cybersecurity and software development. Like Texas, Colorado independently treated early childhood education as a workforce priority worth building a pathway toward, even though the wages it leads to remain low—a tacit recognition that some credentials matter for reasons earnings can’t capture.
Texas and Colorado are leading the way, but states can go further. Recognizing and expanding pipelines for community-value credentials is only the first step. States should pair that investment with tuition assistance, wage subsidies, and other support for the workers in these fields—ensuring that community benefit does not come at the individual’s expense.
Workforce Pell raises the stakes for getting credential quality right. States that use this moment only to screen out low earners will overlook the programs their communities need most—and the workers already doing the hardest jobs.
Mina Dadgar is founder and executive director of Education Equity Solutions, a research group focused on improving education to promote economic mobility for students from low-income communities.