About six years ago, an apprentice training to be a machinist in Washington state told her supervisor she would probably have to drop out of the training program after having her baby: She couldn’t find child care that accommodated her shift.
It was one of the first challenges Shana Peschek was tasked with solving when she became executive director of the Machinists Institute, which trains workers for jobs in the aerospace, manufacturing and automotive industries all over the state.
Peschek knew it was essential to do something for workers with young children.
“That worst shift, the new hires are going to get it. The new hires are generally younger people. They have little kids or they are going to want a little kid,” Peschek said.
“It’s beyond the cost of child care,” she said. “If they can’t find anywhere, we’re going to lose them.”
As Peschek worked on a way to address the situation, she also wondered how she could include apprenticeship in the solution. The answer: incorporating early educator apprenticeships into a custom-built child care center tailored to the trade union’s needs. Last month, The Hechinger Report wrote about San Francisco’s child care apprenticeship program.
“Apprenticeship is my jam,” said Peschek, who emphasized that apprenticeship is a mode of education, not limited to any specific profession. While the word apprentice is often associated with roles like machinists, it is just the term for an educational path that includes paid, on-the-job training. Early educator apprenticeships do just that, providing classes and training alongside paid work experience to help hopeful teachers earn required credentials and get full-time jobs. “I want that pathway available for our teachers and assistant teachers,” she said.
With a combination of institute money, grants and donations, the Machinists Institute bought land and is constructing Little Wings Early Learning Academy in Everett, Washington. Its name is inspired by the local economy, which is powered in part by a nearby Boeing factory. The center will serve workers in the trade union, who will be able to send their young children for care starting as early as 4 a.m. through as late as midnight. Care will also be available on weekends, to accommodate a range of shifts. It is scheduled to open this spring.
Machinists, maritime industry workers and other local tradespeople and apprentices will pay a discounted rate for child care, which will also be available to area residents to enroll their kids.
Peschek’s hopes are high, for all of the apprentices the center will involve.
That’s in part because of the experience some early educator apprentices have had. Apprenticeships have been a part of the trades for centuries, but they are relatively novel in education.
The option changed the course of Carlota Hernández de Cruz’s life. For years, with only an elementary school education from when she grew up in Mexico, she was the primary caregiver for her three children while her husband was the breadwinner. When her youngest child was still in child care, at a California Head Start program run by an area YMCA, she began working a few hours a day as a parent intern at the center.
She eventually encountered Pamm Shaw, who created one of the first early educator apprenticeship programs in the country for the YMCA of the East Bay, in California’s Alameda County. Shaw encouraged Hernández de Cruz to take classes and work toward becoming an early childhood teacher.
“I’m originally from Mexico,” Hernández de Cruz said, remembering her apprehension. “I came with zero English.” But Shaw was convincing.
Hernández de Cruz took classes, one or two at a time, balancing them with motherhood and homekeeping duties. Then her husband got sick and could no longer work. It took years, but she completed the courses for her associate degree. Just a few months before graduation, her husband died.
Carlota Hernández de Cruz, director of Early Childhood Impact at the YMCA of the East Bay, entered the child care field through an apprenticeship. Credit: Emmanuel Guillén Lozano for The Hechinger Report
Hernández de Cruz, now 53, knew that although what she had accomplished was monumental, it wasn’t enough. Thanks to her apprenticeship, however, her bachelor’s degree coursework was paid for, even though it was sometimes a struggle to keep up with the requirements of online courses and lectures in English, while solo parenting and working.
In 2019, Hernández de Cruz earned that bachelor’s degree but turned down a job running a child care center. She wasn’t ready. When she was approached again in 2021 about a director role, at the center where she was working, she agreed. There have been ups and downs: That center closed and she was back to teaching for a while. But now she runs the Vera Casey Center, a Head Start site for infants and toddlers in Berkeley that is part of the YMCA of the East Bay.
“I feel I can say financially I’m stable,” Hernández de Cruz said, and she said she is proud of herself and her children. Her kids grew up watching their mother work and study hard and have had opportunities she didn’t when she was younger, even though she said they all faltered, and flunked a few classes, when their father died. Her younger daughter just graduated from a nursing program and her older daughter completed a bachelor’s degree in child development and is now pursuing a master’s degree. Both daughters live at home with her, as do her parents. (Her son, she said, is still taking classes and finding his way.) “I’m stable but he’s not here with us,” Hernández de Cruz said of her husband, but “being in the classroom with kids, it helped me to heal. That’s what I feel at work. I still feel happy every day.”
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Across the U.S., public school districts are panicking over test scores.
The National Assessment of Educational Progress, or the Nation’s Report Card, as it is known, revealed that students are underperforming in reading, with the most recent scores being the lowest overall since the test was first given in 1992.
The latest scores for Black children have been especially low. In Pittsburgh, for example, only 26 percent of Black third- through fifth-grade public school students are reading at advanced or proficient levels compared to 67 percent of white children.
This opportunity gap should challenge us to think differently about how we educate Black children. Too often, Black children are labeled as needing “skills development.” The problem is that such labels lead to educational practices that dim their curiosity and enthusiasm for school — and overlook their capacity to actually enjoy learning.
As a result, without that enjoyment and the encouragement that often accompanies it, too many Black students grow up never feeling supported in the pursuit of their dreams.
Narrowly defining children based on their test scores is a big mistake. We, as educators, must see children as advanced dreamers who have the potential to overcome any academic barrier with our support and encouragement.
As a co-founder of a bookstore, I believe there are many ways we can do better. I often use books and personal experiences to illustrate some of the pressing problems impacting Black children and families.
One of my favorites is “Abdul’s Story” by Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow.
It tells the tale of a gifted young Black boy who is embarrassed by his messy handwriting and frequent misspellings, so much so that, in erasing his mistakes, he gouges a hole in his paper.
He tries to hide it under his desk. Instead of chastening him, his teacher, Mr. Muhammad, does something powerful: He sits beside Abdul under the desk.
Mr. Muhammad shows his own messy notebook to Abdul, who realizes “He’s messy just like me.”
In that moment, Abdul learns that his dream of becoming a writer is possible; he just has to work in a way that suits his learning style. But he also needs an educator who supports him along the way.
It is something I understand: In my own life, I have been both Abdul and Mr. Muhammad, and it was a teacher named Mrs. Lee who changed my life.
One day after I got into a fight, she pulled me out of the classroom and said, “I am not going to let you fail.” At that point, I was consistently performing at or below basic in reading and writing, but she didn’t define me by my test scores.
Instead, she asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“Because he’s smart and he always interviews famous people and presidents,” I said.
Mrs. Lee explained that Mr. Gumbel was a journalist and encouraged me to start a school newspaper.
So I did. I interviewed people and wrote articles, revising them until they were ready for publication. I did it because Mrs. Lee believed in me and saw me for who I wanted to be — not just my test scores.
If more teachers across the country were like Mrs. Lee and Mr. Muhammad, more Black children would develop the confidence to pursue their dreams. Black children would realize that even if they have to work harder to acquire certain skills, doing so can help them accomplish their dreams.
Years ago, I organized a reading tour in four libraries across the city of Pittsburgh. At that time, I was a volunteer at the Carnegie Library, connecting book reading to children’s dreams.
I remember working with a young Black boy who was playing video games on the computer with his friends. I asked him if he wanted to read, and he shook his head no.
So I asked, “Who wants to build the city of the future?” and he raised his hand.
He and I walked over to a table and began building with magnetic tiles. As we began building, I asked the same question Mrs. Lee had asked me: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
“An architect,” he replied.
I jumped up and grabbed a picture book about Frank Lloyd Wright. We began reading the book, and I noticed that he struggled to pronounce many of the words. I supported him, and we got through it. I later wrote about it.
Each week after that experience, this young man would come up to me ready to read about his dream. He did so because I saw him just as Mr. Muhammad saw Abdul, and just like Mrs. Lee saw me — as an advanced dreamer.
Consider that when inventor Lonnie Johnson was a kid, he took a test and the results declared that he could not be an engineer. Imagine if he’d accepted that fate. Kids around the world would not have the joy of playing with the Super Soaker water gun.
When illustrator Jerry Pinkney was a kid, he struggled with reading just like Freelon. If he had defined himself as “basic” and “below average,” children across America would not have been inspired by his powerful picture book illustrations.
Narrowly defining children based on their test scores is a big mistake.
Each child is a solution to a problem in the world, whether it is big or small. So let us create conditions that inspire Black children to walk boldly in the pursuit of their dreams.
Nosakhere Griffin-EL is the co-founder of The Young Dreamers’ Bookstore. He is a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project in partnership with the National Black Child Development Institute.
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OAKLAND — In 2020, California led the nation in outlawing transcript-withholding, a debt collection practice that sometimes kept low-income college students from getting jobs or advanced degrees. Five years later, 24 of the state’s 115 community colleges still said on their websites that students with unpaid balances could lose access to their transcripts, according to a recent UC Merced survey.
The communications failure has been misleading, student advocates said, although overall, the state’s students have benefited from the law.
It “raises questions about what actual institutional practices are at colleges and the extent to which colleges know the law and are fully compliant with the law,” said Charlie Eaton, a UC Merced sociology professor who led the research team that conducted the survey in October.
California community colleges say they are following the law, which prohibits them from refusing to release the grades of a student who owes money to the school — anywhere from a $25 library fine to unpaid tuition. The misinformation on some college websites is a clerical problem that campuses have been asked to update, the California Community Colleges chancellor’s office said in an emailed statement.
Without an official transcript, students can’t prove they’ve earned college credits to admissions offices elsewhere or to potential employers. Millions of students nationwide have lost access to their transcripts because of unpaid fees, according to estimates from the higher education consulting firm Ithaka S+R.
Student advocates argued that the practice made little money for colleges, while costing graduates opportunities that could help them pay back their debts.
California lawmakers agreed; in 2019, they passed legislation that took effect on Jan. 1 2020, barring colleges from using transcript holds to collect debts.
At least 12 other states have followed California’s lead, passing laws limiting or banning colleges from withholding transcripts.
A similar but less stringent federal rule approved during the Biden administration took effect last year.
The new rules have raised awareness about colleges’ debt collection practices and inspired some to find ways to help their students avoid falling behind on their payments in the first place or to pay off what they owe — including by forgiving their debts.
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Colleges and universities, however, argued that withholding transcripts was one of the few ways they had to prevent students from bouncing among institutions and leaving unpaid bills in their wake. Some use another tactic, blocking them from registering for new courses until bills are paid.
When colleges choose to withhold transcripts, the burden falls more heavily on low-income students and students of color, according to the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Often those students accrue debts when they withdraw partway through a course, leading the college to return part of their financial aid to the federal government and charge the bill to the student.
In states with laws limiting transcript withholding, many colleges have begun communicating earlier and more often with students about their debts and offering flexible payment plans, said Elizabeth Looker, a senior program manager at Ithaka S+R. Some have added financial literacy training or required students with unpaid bills to meet with counselors.
Court documents show Annette Ayala’s legal battle with Professional Medical Careers Institute after they withheld her transcripts over claims of a debt she owed the college. Ayala won in court and is in the process of applying to RN programs near her home in Simi Valley. Credit: Keri Oberly for The Hechinger Report
Eight public colleges and universities in Ohio went further, offering a deal to former students with unpaid balances: Reenroll at any of the eight, and get up to $5,000 of the outstanding debt forgiven. Called the Ohio College Comeback Compact, the program, which began in 2002 and concludes this fall, was open to former students who had at least a 2.0 GPA and had been out of school a year or more.
The program was designed to give a second chance to students whose educations stalled because of events outside their control, such as losing a job in the middle of the semester, said Steve McKellips, vice president for enrollment management at the University of Akron.
Since the Ohio College Compact’s inception, 79 students have returned to the university under the program, at a cost to the state of $54,174 in debt forgiven. The university netted five times that, or $271,924, in additional tuition, McKellips said. More than 700 students have used the compact to reenroll, according to Ithaka S+R, which helped coordinate the program and is studying the results.
“I think sometimes people have this image of somebody walking away from a tuition bill because they just don’t care,” McKellips said. “But sometimes there’s just a boulder in the way and somebody needs to move it. Once the boulder was moved and they could move forward, we’re finding them continuing happily along the way they always intended to.”
The University of California cited expected cuts to federal and state funding as one reason it opposed the bill. “UC believes that maintaining the ability to hold registration is essential for its ability to reasonably secure unpaid student debt,” UC legislative director Jessica Duong wrote to lawmakers.
Cal State spokesperson Amy Bentley-Smith said that Cal State wanted a flexible approach to debt collection and that campuses had started eliminating registration holds for minor debts such as parking tickets and lost library books.
“Students are able to move forward with their enrollment even with institutional debts in the low hundreds to the low thousands of dollars, depending upon the university,” she said.
Supporters of the failed bill — which also would have barred colleges from reporting a student’s institutional debt to credit agencies — said curbing aggressive debt collection doesn’t just help low-income students; it speeds up the training of workers in industries crucial to the state’s economy.
“Schools think about these institutional debts in a way that is very penny-wise and pound-foolish, and it’s preventing people from participating in the economy,” said Mike Pierce, executive director of Protect Borrowers.
Annette Ayala of Simi Valley, hoping to become a registered nurse, took her for-profit college to court to force it to comply with California’s debt collection law.
She had earned her vocational nursing license from the school, the Professional Medical Careers Institute, and wanted to continue her studies to become a registered nurse. But the college refused to release her transcript — citing a $7,500 debt that Ayala argued in court records she did not owe — and without the transcript she could not apply to other colleges.
In her case, California’s Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, which regulates for-profit colleges under the state’s Department of Consumer Affairs, cited her former school for violating the state’s transcript-withholding law.
Having earned a vocational nursing license from a for-profit college, Annette Ayala of Simi Valley, California, wanted to continue her studies and become an RN. Her college refused to release her transcript, citing a disputed debt, but Ayala took the school to court and won her case, under a California law that prohibits transcript withholding. Credit: Keri Oberly for The Hechinger Report
The college was fined $1,000 and ordered to update its enrollment agreement. The school forgave the debt it said Ayala owed. It’s the only case in which a school has been cited for withholding a transcript since the bureau started monitoring compliance with the law more closely two years ago, said Monica Vargas, a spokesperson for consumer affairs.
School officials had been unaware of the California law at the time Ayala sued, the school’s controller, Joshua Taylor, said, and have since updated their catalog to comply with it.
With her vocational nursing license, Ayala has been working in home health care. Now that she has her transcript, she’s applying for RN programs, and said her salary would roughly double once she has the new degree, allowing her to save for the future and help her son pay for college.
“You’ve got to give people the chance to get through their program and pay their debts as they’re working,” she said. “You can’t hold them back from being able to make top dollar with their abilities to pay back these loans.”
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Last year, Project 2025 was a conservative wish list: a grab bag of proposals large and small that would transform the federal government, including in education.
Months later, many of those wishes have become reality. That includes, at least in part, Project 2025’s ultimate goal of doing away with the Education Department.
The department still exists — getting rid of it completely would require congressional action— but it is greatly diminished: Much of the department’s work is being farmed out to other federal agencies. Half of its workforce of about 4,100 people have left or been fired. And Education Secretary Linda McMahon wrote after her confirmation that she was leading the department’s “final mission.”
Eliminating the Education Department was just one of many goals, however. While the administration did not meet all the other tasks in this “to-do” list below, compiled by The Hechinger Report and taken directly from Project 2025, there’s still three more years to go.
Early childhood
Eliminate Head Start: NO. Head Start, which provides free preschool for low-income children, still exists, though some individual centers had problems accessing their money because of temporary freezes from the Department of Government Efficiency and the prolonged government shutdown. The federal government also closed five of 10 Head Start regional offices, which collectively served 22 states.
Pay for in-home child care instead of universal (center-based) daycare: NO. Project 2025 states that “funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare.” There have been no moves to fulfill this goal, but the budget reconciliation bill the president signed in July increased the child tax credit and introduced “Trump Accounts” for children under age 18.
Expand child care for military families:YES. The National Defense Authorization Act, passed on Dec. 17 and sent to the president for his signature, authorizes over $491 million to design and build new child care centers for these families, among other provisions. The Department of Defense provides child care to military families on a sliding scale based on income. However, about 20 percent of military families who need child care can’t get it because there is not enough space.
Give businesses an incentive to provide “on-site” child care: NO. Project 2025 states that “across the spectrum of professionalized child care options, on-site care puts the least stress on the parent-child bond.”
K-12 education
Move the National Center for Education Statistics to the Census Bureau; transfer higher education statistics to the Labor Department: NO. Education data collection remains at the Education Department. However, the agency’s capacity has been sharply reduced following mass firings and the termination of key contracts — a development not envisioned in Project 2025. At the same time, Donald Trump directed the center to launch a major new data collection on college admissions to verify that colleges are no longer giving preferences based on race, ethnicity or gender.
Expand choice for families by making federal funding portable to many school options: PARTIAL. In January, the president signed an executive order encouraging “educational freedom.” One of the order’s provisions requires the departments of Defense and Interior — which run K-12 schools for military families and tribal communities, respectively — to allow parents to use some federal funding meant for their children’s education at private, religious and charter schools. However, that initiative for Indian schools ended up being scaled back after tribes protested. The “big, beautiful” spending bill signed in July created a national voucher program, but states have to opt in to participate.
Send money now controlled by the federal government, such as Title I and special education funding, to the states as block grants: NO. In the current fiscal year, about $18.5 billion in Title I money flowed to districts to support low-income students. States received about $14 billion to support educating children with disabilities. Project 2025 envisions giving states that money with no strings attached, which it says would allow more flexibility. While the administration has not lifted requirements for all states, it is considering requests from Indiana, Iowa and Oklahoma that would allow those states to spend their federal money with less government oversight. Also, in his fiscal 2026 budget proposal, Trump floated the idea of consolidating several smaller education programs, such as those supporting rural students, homeless students and after-school activities, into one $2 billion block grant. That would be far less than the combined $6.5 billion set aside for these programs in the current budget.
Reject “radical gender ideology” and “critical race theory,” and eliminate requirements to accept such ideology as a condition of receiving federal funds:YES. Immediately after Trump was sworn into office, he reversed a Biden administration rule that included protection of LGBTQ+ students under Title IX, which bans sex-based discrimination in education programs and activities that receive federal money. Trump also signed an executive order threatening to withhold federal dollars from schools over what the order called “gender ideology extremism” and “critical race theory.” In the months since, the administration launched Title IX investigations in school districts where transgender students are allowed to participate on sports teams and use bathrooms that align with their gender identity. It sent letters to schools across the country threatening to pull funding unless they agree to its interpretation of civil rights laws, to include banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies and initiatives. The Education Department also pulled federal research grants and investigated schools and colleges over DEI policies it calls discriminatory.
Pass a federal “parents’ bill of rights,” modeled after similar bills passed at the state level: NO. House Republicans passed a Parents’ Bill of Rights Act two years ago, which would have required districts to post all curricula and reading materials, require schools receiving Title I money to notify parents of any speakers visiting a school, and mandate at least two teacher-parent conferences each year, among other provisions. The Senate did not take it up, and lawmakers have not reintroduced the bill in this session of Congress. About half of the states have their own version of a parentsʼ bill of rights.
Shrink the pool of students eligible for free school meals by ending the “community eligibility provision” and reject universal school meal efforts: NO. Under current rules, schools are allowed to provide free lunch to all students, regardless of their family’s income, if the school or district is in a low-income area. That provision remains in place. The Trump administration has not changed income eligibility requirements for free and reduced-price lunch at schools: Families that earn within 185 percent of the federal poverty line still qualify for reduced lunch and those within 130 percent of the poverty line qualify for free lunch.
Higher education
Roll back student loan forgiveness and income-driven repayment plans: PARTIAL.Three income-driven repayment plans will be phased out next year and a new one — the Repayment Assistance Plan — will be added. RAP requires borrowers to make payments for 30 years before they qualify for loan forgiveness. The administration also reached a proposed agreement to end even earlier the most controversial repayment plan known as SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). Trump officials have referred to the SAVE plan as illegal loan forgiveness. Under the plan, some borrowers were eligible to have their loans cleared after only 10 years, while making minimal payments.
End Parent PLUS loans: PARTIAL. These loans, which parents take out to help their children, had no limit. They still exist, but as of July 2026, there will be an annual cap of $20,000 and a lifetime limit of $65,000 per child. Grad PLUS loans, which allow graduate students to borrow directly on behalf of themselves, are being phased out. Under the Repayment Assistance Plan, graduates in certain fields, such as medicine, can borrow no more than $50,000 a year, or $200,000 over four years.
Privatize the federal student loan portfolio: NO. The Trump administration reportedly has been shopping a portion of the federal student loan portfolio to private buyers, but no bids have been made public. Project 2025 also called for eliminating the Federal Student Aid office, which is now housed in the Education Department and oversees student loan programs. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the Treasury Department would be a better home for the office, but no plans for a move have been announced.
End public service loan forgiveness: NO. PSLF allows borrowers to have part of their debt erased if they work for the government or in nonprofit public service jobs and make at least 120 monthly payments. The structure remains, but a new rule could narrow the definition of the kinds of jobs that qualify for loan forgiveness. The proposed rule raises concerns that borrowers working for groups that assist immigrants, transgender youth or provide humanitarian aid to Palestinians, for example, could be disqualified from loan forgiveness. The new rule would go into effect in July.
Rescind Biden-era rules around sexual assault and discrimination: YES. The Department of Education almost immediately jettisoned changes that the Biden administration had made in 2024 to Title IX, which governs how universities and colleges handle cases of sexual assault and discrimination. Under the Biden rules, blocked by a federal judge days before Trump’s inauguration, accused students were no longer guaranteed the right to in-person hearings or to cross-examine their accusers. The Trump Education Department then returned to a policy from the president’s first term, under which students accused of sexual assault will be entitled to confront their accusers, through a designee, which the administration says restores due process but advocates say will discourage alleged victims from coming forward.
Reform higher education accreditation: YES. In an executive order, Trump made it easier for accreditors to be stripped of their authority and new ones to be approved, saying the existing bodies — which, under federal law, oversee the quality of colleges and universities — have ignored poor student outcomes while pushing diversity, equity and inclusion. Florida and Texas have started setting up their own accreditors and said the administration has agreed to expedite the typically yearslong approval process. The Department of Education has earmarked $7 million to support this work and help colleges and universities switch accreditors.
Dismantle DEI programs and efforts: PARTIAL. Though the administration called for eliminating college DEI programs and efforts, most of the colleges that have shut down their DEI offices have done so in response to state-level legislation. Around 400 books removed from the Naval Academy library because of concerns that they contained messages of diversity or inclusion, but most of the books were ultimately returned. The National Science Foundation canceled more than 400 grants related to several topics, including DEI.
Jill Barshay, Ariel Gilreath, Meredith Kolodner, Jon Marcus, Neal Morton and Olivia Sanchez contributed to this report.
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Ohio resident Megan Cutright lost her hospitality job during the pandemic. At her daughter’s urging, she found her way to Lorain County Community College in Ohio and onto a new career path.
Community colleges will soon have a new opportunity to help more students like Megan achieve their career goals. Starting next summer, federal funds will be available through a program known as Workforce Pell, which extends federal aid to career-focused education and training programs that last between eight and 15 weeks.
Members of Congress advocating for Pell Grants to cover shorter programs have consistently highlighted Workforce Pell’s potential, noting that the extension will lead to “good-paying jobs.”
That could happen. But it will only happen if states and colleges thoughtfully consider the supports students need for success.
This is important, because helping students pay for workforce programs is not enough. They also need support and wraparound services, much like the kind Megan was offered at Lorain, where her program followed an evidence-based model known as ASAP that assigns each student a career adviser.
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Megan’s adviser “helped me from day one,” she said, in a story posted on the college’s website. “I told her I was interested in the radiologic technology program but that I had no idea where to start. We just did everything together.”
Megan went on to secure a job as an assistant in the radiology department at her local hospital, where she had interned as a student. She knew what steps she needed to take because her community college supported and advised her, using an evidence-backed practice, illustrating something we have learned from the experience of the community colleges that use the ASAP model: Support is invaluable.
Megan also knew that her path to a full-time position in radiologic technology required her to pass a licensure test — scheduled for four days after graduation.
The students who will enroll in Workforce Pell programs deserve the same careful attention. To ensure that Workforce Pell is effective for students, we should follow the same three critical steps that helped drive the expansion of ASAP and brought it to Megan’s college: (1) experiment to see what works, (2) collect and follow the data and (3) ensure that colleges learn from each other to apply what works.
Before ASAP was developed, the higher education community had some ideas about what might work to help students complete their degrees and get good jobs. When colleges and researchers worked together to test these ideas and gathered reliable data, though, they learned that those strategies only helped students at the margins.
There was no solid evidence about what worked to make big, lasting improvements in college completion until the City University of New York (CUNY) worked with researchers at MDRC to test ASAP and its combination of longer-lasting strategies. They kept a close eye on the data and learned that while some strategies didn’t produce big effects on their own, the combined ASAP approach resulted in significant improvements in student outcomes, nearly doubling the three-year college completion rate.
CUNY and MDRC shared what they learned with higher education leaders and policymakers, inspiring other community colleges to try out the model. Those colleges started seeing results too, and the model kept spreading. Today, ASAP is used in more than 50 colleges in seven states. And it’s paying off — in Ohio, for example, students who received ASAP services ended up earning significantly more than those who did not.
That same experimentation and learning mindset will be needed for Workforce Pell, because while short-term training can lead to good careers, it’s far from guaranteed.
For example, phlebotomy technician programs are popular, but without additional training or credentials they often don’t lead to jobs that pay well. Similarly, students who complete short-term programs in information technology, welding and construction-related skills can continue to acquire stackable credentials that substantially increase their earning potential, although that also doesn’t happen automatically. The complexity of the credentialing marketplace can make it impossible for students and families to assess programs and make good decisions without help.
A big question for Workforce Pell will be how to make sure students understand how to get onto a career path and continue advancing their wider career aspirations. Workforce Pell grants are designed to help students with low incomes overcome financial barriers, but these same students often face other barriers.
That’s why colleges should experiment with supports like career advising to help students identify stepping-stones to a good career, along with placement services to help them navigate the job market. In addition, states must expand their data collection efforts to formally include noncredit programs. Some, including Iowa, Louisiana and Virginia, have already made considerable progress linking their education and workforce systems.
Offering student support services and setting up data systems requires resources, but Workforce Pell will bring new funds to states and colleges that are currently financing job training programs. Philanthropy can also help by providing resources to test out what works best to get students through short-term programs and onto solid career paths.
Sharing what works — and what doesn’t — will be critical to the success of Workforce Pell in the long-term. The same spirit of learning that fueled innovation around the ASAP model should be embedded in Workforce Pell from the start.
Alexander Mayer is director of postsecondary education at MDRC, the nonprofit research association.
This story about Workforce Pell was produced byThe Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
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MOBILE, Ala. — Three or four times a week, LaTyra Malone starts her day at Mobile Infirmary hospital at 6:30 a.m. For the next 12 hours, she makes her rounds and visits with patients — asking if they’re in pain, checking vitals, administering fluids. To an outside observer, she appears to be a nurse.
But Malone, 37, is a registered nurse apprentice. Everything she has learned how to do in her nursing classes at Coastal Alabama Community College, she can do at the hospital under the supervision of registered nurse Ondrea Berry, her journeyworker — a term typically used in the skilled trades. Unlike most nursing students who complete their required clinical hours in groups for no pay, Malone gets paid as an employee with benefits. She also gets much more personalized, hands-on learning time.
“It’s like having a little kid attached to your leg all day,” Berry joked.
For Malone, the partnership is invaluable.
“I learn so much more one-on-one,” Malone said. “I might know the basics of disease processes or why we’re giving a certain medicine, but hearing her break it down to me helps a lot.”
The pair work largely as a team, alternating duties to allow Malone a chance to observe and practice. By now, Malone knows the ropes pretty well: In addition to her apprenticeship training and classes, she has 16 years of experience as a certified nursing assistant and a medical assistant. And Berry, who is 25, says she benefits from the working relationship too. “There are teaching moments for both of us,” she said.
Degreed nursing apprenticeships, like the one in Alabama, have emerged nationally as a potential solution to a thorny problem. The national nursing shortage is creeping toward crisis levels, with the demand for RNs like Berry and licensed practical nurses, or LPNs, projected to outstrip the supply for at least the next decade. At the same time, tens of thousands of people like Malone are already working in patient care in hospitals. Many aspire to be nurses — in fact, many certified nursing assistant programs sell the idea that you can start there, quickly land a job and then continue on to become a nurse.
But in reality, that’s a huge leap that requires an entirely different admissions process and English, math and science prerequisites that many nursing assistants don’t have. It also assumes that someone working an eight- or 12-hour shift for $18 an hour can find the time and the money for more education.
“The sort of ‘we are excellent’ ethos in nursing might be self-defeating in that it is weeding out a lot of people who would be amazing nurses,” said Iris Palmer, director for community colleges with the education policy program at New America.
Ondrea Berry, left, dispenses medication at Mobile Infirmary hospital while LaTyra Malone looks on. As an apprentice, Malone must be supervised by Berry at all times. Credit: Mike Kittrell for Work Shift
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Several states, including Texas, North Carolina and Wisconsin, have begun growing registered apprenticeships in nursing — which have approval from the U.S. Department of Labor — to help address this problem. But no state has done quite as much as Alabama in scaling the model.
In 2021, the Alabama Board of Nursing worked with the state legislature to create a nursing apprenticeship license. Normally, nursing students are not licensed until after they graduate and pass a national licensure exam, and therefore they can’t be paid for their supervised clinical hours. The new apprenticeship license allows them to earn while they learn, making nursing school much more accessible for students like Malone and helping to fill critical staffing needs in hospitals.
Since the law passed, 80 employers and 28 colleges and universities in Alabama have jointly created LPN and RN apprenticeship programs for those who are still working toward a degree. Nearly 450 apprentices — the great majority RNs — have completed the program and passed their exam, with more than 500 currently apprenticing. It’s too soon to say whether apprenticeships will solve the nursing shortage in the state, but early data shows benefits for employers and aspiring nurses alike.
Mobile Infirmary has had over 90 nursing apprentices since the hospital’s program began in 2022, first with the LPN apprenticeship and soon after with the RN one. Graduates are required to stay at the hospital for one year after the apprenticeship ends, but most are staying beyond that. Only five have left so far, according to Stefanie Willis-Turner, the director of nursing school partnership and programs at Mobile Infirmary.
The hospital, like many others, already offered tuition reimbursement for employees who wanted to go back to college and move into nursing or another higher-level position. But such programs have notoriously low uptake, in part because most low-income employees can’t front the cost of tuition and also because many don’t know what steps to take.
“It amazed me the number of people that wanted to go back to school but didn’t really know where to get started,” Willis-Turner said. “Having a person to help guide them has really been our trigger, and that’s how we run this program.”
LaTyra Malone is a two-time apprentice at Mobile Infirmary hospital. Last year, she worked with Ondrea Berry as a licensed practical nurse apprentice while she earned the certification. This year, she is a registered nurse apprentice. Credit: Mike Kittrell for Work Shift
Willis-Turner played a crucial role in recruiting Malone for the apprenticeship. Malone has wanted to be a nurse since she was a teenager when she was president of her high school’s chapter of HOSA-Future Health Professionals, a global student-led organization that promotes careers in health care. But her plans to become a registered nurse were delayed when she became a mother. The financial burden plus the rigid schedules of nursing school made it difficult to make room for parenting, working and studying.
With the apprenticeship, Malone doesn’t have to worry about paying for college, and she can provide for her family while improving her nursing skills. Her path stands in stark contrast to that of Berry, who worked at Dairy Queen throughout nursing school to pay for tuition and health insurance. Berry didn’t have kids to take care of, but she also didn’t have financial support from anyone else in her family. Her only on-the-job training in nursing school was the clinical hours, where she joined a group of students who took turns practicing new skills with just one nurse. Berry says she only attempted two IVs in that time. Malone has done so many she can’t count.
About 75 percent of the apprentices at Mobile Infirmary over the last three years were already working at the hospital. The rest came from surrounding medical facilities. Some even quit their jobs to transfer to Mobile Infirmary for a better chance at getting into the apprenticeship program. In addition to paying students for their work, Mobile Infirmary pays for any tuition that isn’t covered by scholarships or grants. The hospital also provides two uniforms free of charge. And students know they have a guaranteed job after they graduate and pass the nursing exam.
This kind of targeted support is what makes the best apprenticeships successful in boosting individual economic mobility, its advocates say. Another key factor is the type of job an apprenticeship prepares people for. Most health care apprenticeships are for entry-level roles like CNAs, patient care technicians and medical assistants — jobs that, on average, pay $18-$20 an hour.
About half of states offer apprenticeships for LPNs, who make about 50 percent more than that, and half do so for RNs, whose median salaries are close to six figures, according to data from the U.S. Department of Labor. But far fewer apprentices are in those LPN and RN programs — and the majority of RN apprenticeships are for nurses who already have degrees, not for those who are still learning. That means aspiring nurses must still get all the way through the financial and logistical obstacles of nursing school before they can start to work.
Josh Laney helped set up the different model in Alabama when he was director of the state’s Office of Apprenticeship. For a long time, he said, he bought into the “urban legend” that training more people to be certified nursing assistants, especially when they’re young, would get people onto the path to becoming nurses.
“The pitch was, ‘We get you the certificate and then you’re going to work at a hospital because it’s a very high-demand occupation. From there you can go on and move into nursing or whatever else you want to do,’” Laney said. “But there was no specified plan for how to do that — just a low-wage, very stressful and strenuous job.”
The data backs that up. A 2018 study of federal Health Profession Opportunity Grants for CNA training showed that only 3 percent of those who completed the training went on to pursue further education to become an LPN or RN. Only 1 percent obtained an associate degree or above. A study in California showed slightly better odds: 22 percent of people who completed certificate programs at community colleges to become CNAs went on to get a higher-level credential in health care, but only 13 percent became registered nurses within six years.
Because of these outcomes, Laney refused to pursue apprenticeships for CNAs in Alabama. One reason apprenticeships for CNAs and medical assistants are common, however, is that they are jobs that don’t require degrees and have fewer regulations when it comes to training. Setting up a registered apprenticeship for nurses who don’t already have a bachelor’s degree is complex and requires the work of many entities — the nursing board, colleges and employers.
When he went to the state board of nursing to propose LPN and RN apprenticeships, Laney was initially shut down.
“To their credit, they said, ‘Go away, bureaucrat! You’re not industry, you’re not the employer. You don’t really have anything to do with this,’” he recalled. “What I learned there, and what I’ve recommended to every other state who’s tried this, is let the employers carry your water. If they want it, they’ll get it done.”
Laney then talked to the Alabama Hospital Association and Alabama Nursing Home Association, to reach employers. Given the shortages they had been experiencing, they bought into the idea and approached the nursing board themselves. Next, Laney’s team got community colleges on board, then universities. With the assurance that apprenticeships wouldn’t cut down on any of the required classes and clinical hours, the nursing board agreed to create the new license, following legislative approval.
Other states embarking on nursing apprenticeships have faced similar challenges.
Apprenticeships aren’t a panacea. They hold promise for creating upward mobility, diversifying the profession and improving the odds a student makes it through to graduation, but they can’t solve all the knotty challenges of the nursing shortage. A lack of instructors in nursing schools — and therefore a lack of available seats for qualified students — is still one of the biggest factors. And in the apprenticeship model, every student needs one-on-one mentorship, meaning hospitals must have enough staff available and willing to work in a mentoring role for up to a year.
Jay Prosser, executive director of the Massachusetts Nursing Council on Workforce Sustainability, knows all that. But he thinks apprenticeships will bring in more “practice-ready” nurses who are more likely to stay in the field long-term, especially those who were already working in patient care in the United States or other countries. Massachusetts is on the cusp of starting a licensed practical nurse apprenticeship with one employer and one academic partner, after working with the state nursing board and colleges for the past year. Unlike in Alabama, the nursing board didn’t need to create a new license, but rather the board judges whether educational programs meet regulations or not.
The Massachusetts Nursing Council on Workforce Sustainability is also creating a nursing apprenticeship network in the state, to make it easier for different institutions and programs to exchange ideas.
Prosser said one of the biggest barriers was making sure that the scope of practice for apprentices was clearly defined. He worked with local colleges to make sure of this. Prosser had previously worked as an assistant chief nursing officer in Birmingham, Alabama, and moved to Massachusetts in 2021 with the idea of apprenticeships already in mind.
Several other states have also created nursing apprenticeships for students who don’t already have a degree, but they’re limited to single institutions. In 2023, Texas began offering nursing apprenticeships for students who hadn’t already earned a degree in a collaboration between South Texas College and the Texas Workforce Commission.
The University of Wisconsin Health system has created a portfolio of nine registered apprenticeship programs, including an RN program launched in 2023 and a handful of other apprenticeship-style programs. Bridgett Willey, director of allied health education and career pathways, said the hospital started with entry-level apprenticeships, like medical assistants, before proposing degreed programs.
“There’s still kind of a myth that the colleges are going to do all this on their own,” Willey said. “Well, that’s not true. Employers have to sponsor, because we’re the ones hiring the apprentices and often supporting tuition costs, as well.”
The outcomes from the entry-level apprentice programs helped convince the health system that it was worth investing more. A three-year study showed that staff retention rates for those who participated in the hospital’s apprenticeships were 22% higher than for those who didn’t. In the two-year-old RN program, attrition is less than 10% so far — significantly lower than the attrition rate the hospital has seen with traditional students who participate in clinicals at the hospital.
UW Health supports efforts to scale their apprenticeship model across the state, but so far they haven’t panned out. Willey said employers are interested, but conversations often stall when questions arise about how to create more clinical capacity and find funding sources to support apprentices.
Even so, Eric Dunker, founding executive director of the National Center for the Apprenticeship Degree, which is affiliated with Reach University, predicts that nursing apprenticeships are about to see major growth, as teaching apprenticeships did five years ago. Earlier this year, Reach University received a $1 million grant to expand apprenticeships in behavioral health, and is planning for nursing ones. The strict licensing regulations for nursing make it more complicated than scaling up teaching apprenticeships, but Dunker sees the possibility of expanding them if nursing boards, colleges and employers all come to the table, as they did in Alabama.
“There’s a lot of entry-level health care apprenticeships,” Dunker said. “But the key is upward mobility, which is nursing and nurse practitioners. There’s typically been a bottleneck in stacking these pathways, but that’s where you’re starting to see more states and systems become a little more creative.”
Tyler Sturdivant, Coastal Alabama Community College’s associate dean of nursing, knows what that looks like. Figuring out the logistics of setting up an apprenticeship program was a challenge, he said, and required hiring an additional staff member to liaise between the college and hospital partners. But three years into the apprenticeship program for LPNs and RNs, the school is seeing higher completion rates than for traditional students.
This means they’re producing more licensed nurses to fill positions and someday mentor, or even teach, other apprentices.
On a typical Friday morning in September at Mobile Infirmary, Malone and Berry visited a 70-year-old man who came in for a urinary tract infection that then weakened him. That day, the apprentice and journeyworker switched out his bed for one lower to the ground to reduce the fall risk, taught him how to raise the bed so he could sit upright, updated him on a plan for physical therapy and adjusted his socks for him.
Malone appeared comfortable and confident, taking the lead in the patient’s care while Berry assisted her. Malone says the many hours of practice she’s had through the apprenticeship has made her feel prepared for the job and ready to continue to follow her dreams. One day, she wants to become a nurse practitioner specializing in mental health.
“I won’t feel complete until I actually become a nurse,” Malone says. “I thought I was going to be one sooner, but bumps in the road happened and I ended up having a child. If it wasn’t for the apprenticeship, I probably wouldn’t be here now.”
Contact editor Lawrie Mifflin at 212-678-4078 or on email at mifflin@hechingerreport.org.
This story was produced in partnership with Work Shift and reprinted with permission.
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by Savannah Celeste Scott, The Hechinger Report November 17, 2025
Imagine clocking out of an eight-hour shift and your compensation is a pat on the back and experience for your resume.
This scenario is a disturbing reality for around one million college students, and it needs to stop. Students work countless hours on top of their academic pursuits only to be told they should be “grateful for the opportunity.”
The government must pass legislation mandating that all internships include monetary compensation; employers must stop exploiting students and recent graduates while they build necessary work experience.
The idea of an unpaid internship is odd considering that most of us grew up learning that work is rewarded. Some 71 percent of American households give children ages 5 to 17 an allowance for doing their chores, a Wells Fargo study found.
Practices like that have led many of us to believe that labor should be paid, and it should be no different when we enter the job market.
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There is a disturbing correlation between unpaid internships and exploitation, especially for people from marginalized communities. Historically, Black people have been the face of working without compensation — a phenomenon dating back to early American slave practices.
Unpaid work is not just exploitation — it is dehumanizing. No person can survive without money, so no one should be required to work with no compensation to help them live. The reality is that, unlike higher-income students, low-income students cannot afford to work for free. They need money to cover their tuition, afford groceries and pay for a place to live. This is why unpaid internships further the cycle of economic exploitation, the student-run Columbia Spectator noted.
Yet there are plenty of people who believe compensation does not always have to be monetary. Many students have heard employers extol the value of “experience” as they try to persuade them to work without pay.
Such was the case for me when I was hired for a legal internship as a freshman in college. I thoroughly enjoyed my internship, as it gave me both professional and social opportunities. But it was an extremely difficult time for me both mentally and financially.
I was taking 16 credit hours, regularly writing for a student publication and working another part-time job to save money for law school. The stress of going into the office every day to handle casework — often ranging from domestic violence to sexual assault cases — was mentally taxing when combined with schoolwork and extracurricular responsibilities.
While the experience that the internship provided was incredible, monetary compensation would have made it much less stressful, as I would not have needed the other job.
Unpaid internships can also hurt graduates’ prospects in the job market. Those who have had unpaid internships receive fewer job offers on average than those who completed paid internships, statistics from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) show.
The average student who completed an unpaid internship also saw $22,500 less in their starting salaries than those who completed paid internships. According to the DeltaInstitute, “employers offering compensation tend to invest more in mentoring, performance feedback, and skill-building”; that added investment provides students with more preparation for the job market and helps them look more impressive to an employer.
Unpaid interns have been fighting for compensation for decades. A lawsuit filed by twointernsagainst Fox Searchlight over their lack of compensation when working on the movie “Black Swan” resulted in a legal battle that lasted five years. The two interns werefinally compensateda total of $13,500 for their work — despite the film grossing more than $300 million.
The Fox Searchlight lawsuit sparked a wave of other impassioned interns to plead their cases as well, including a class-action lawsuit against NBCUniversal back in July 2013. That resulted in a$6.4 million settlementsplit among thousands of interns.
In both cases, the employers made millions of dollars in profits but still refused to pay their interns until they were legally forced to do so.
According to Shawn VanDerziel, the president and chief executive officer of NACE, paid internships are a “game changer” to employers and employees alike. The dilemma is this: Employers want labor, and students want internships. The most obvious solution would be to pay students for the work that they do.
Students do not work for fun. They work because they want to create better futures for themselves; their success will be less likely if they don’t receive monetary compensation. The government needs to make it illegal for employers to exploit students by having them work without pay.
College students should not be expected to work for free.
Savannah Celeste Scott is a senior at the University of Georgia in Athens, studying journalism, Spanish and law, jurisprudence and the state on a pre-law track.
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This story was produced in partnership with Teen Vogue and reprinted with permission.
Christopher Cade wants to be president someday. His inspiration largely comes from family members, who have been involved in local politics and activism since long before he was born. But policies from the Trump administration and the Ohio Legislature are complicating his college experience — and his plans to become a politician.
Cade is a student at Ohio State University double-majoring in public policy analysis and political science with a focus on American political theory. He recalls his maternal grandmother, Maude Hill — who had a large hand in raising him — talking to him about her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement. She also worked at Columbus, Ohio-based affordable housing development nonprofit, Homeport, and has gone to Capitol Hill to speak with the state delegation multiple times. His dad is the senior vice president of the housing choice voucher program at the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority, and his older brother has a degree in political science and is interested in social justice advocacy work, Cade said. Last fall, his first on campus, Cade began applying to opportunities to bolster his resume for a future career in politics.
The now 19-year-old secured an internship with the U.S. Department of Transportation and a work-study job on campus in the university’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion. But the federal opportunity was scrapped when the Trump administration imposed a hiring freeze and budget cuts. His campus job ended when the university announced it would “sunset” the diversity office in response to federal and state anti-diversity, equity and inclusion orders and actions, according to Cade.
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The work-study position was with the university’s Bell National Resource Center on the African American Male, which was founded to support Black men to stay in college. It’s a cause he was excited about.
“I would help order food or speak with students or do interviews,” said Cade. “I developed a good 20 different programs for the next year.”
In February, when the university announced it was closing the office, “I was like, ‘Well, so six months of work just for no reason,’” he said.
OSU President Ted Carter released a statement on Feb. 27 saying the closure of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion was a response to both state and federal actions regarding DEI in public education. The move eliminated 17 staff positions, not including student roles, the university said. Programming and services provided by the Office of Student Life’s Center for Belonging and Social Change were also scrapped.
The change came before the Trump administration’s initial deadline for complying with a memo that threatened to cut funding for public colleges and universities, as well as K-12 schools, that offer DEI programs and initiatives. In March, the administration announced that OSU was one of roughly 50 universities under federal investigation for allegedly discriminating against white and Asian students in graduate admissions. Additionally, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed legislation in March banning DEI programs in the state’s public colleges and universities. The legislation went into effect in June.
Before the DEI office closed, Cade said, “I felt so heard and seen.” He’d attended a private, predominantly white, Catholic high school, he said. “It was not a place that supported me culturally and helped me understand more about who I am and my Blackness,” he recalled. At the university, though, “the programming we had throughout the year [was] about how to change the narrative on who a Black man is and what it means when you go out here and interact with people.
“And then for them to close down all these programs, that essentially told me that I wasn’t cared about.”
After the February announcement, students pushed back, organizing protests and a sit-in at the student union. But eventually, those efforts quieted.
Cade says students felt like there was a “cloud of darkness” hanging over them. But he also thought of his Office of Diversity and Inclusion coworkers, some of whom had spent decades working there, helping students. In particular he thought of his former colleague Chila Thomas, who celebrated her fifth anniversary last year as the executive director of the Young Scholars Program. That program, which helps low-income aspiring first-generation college students get to and through college, was one of several of the office’s programs that will continue. The day after Carter’s announcement, she and others in the office spent time giving students space to talk through their feelings, despite the uncertainties surrounding their own employment, Cade said.
Since the university crackdown on DEI, Cade said he’s experienced more discomfort on campus, even outright racism. He says he was approached by a white person who said, “I’m so glad they’re getting rid of DEI” and spit on his shoe and used a racial slur.
“I don’t know how that could ever be acceptable to anyone, but that was [when] a flip switched in my head,” Cade said. “I couldn’t sit down and be sad and silent. I had to stand up and make change.”
In March, he traveled with other students to Washington, D.C., as part of the Undergraduate Student Government’s Governmental Relations Committee. They met with Ohio Rep. Troy Balderson and an aide, along with staffers from the offices of fellow Ohio lawmakers Sen. Bernie Moreno and Rep. Joyce Beatty, to discuss college affordability, DEI policies and the federal hiring freeze. Cade says he described how he was affected by the U.S. Department of Transportation canceling his internship.
In Carter’s announcement, he stated that all student employees would be “offered alternative jobs at the university,” but Cade said during a meeting with Office of Diversity and Inclusion student employees, an OSU dean clarified that they would have to apply for new opportunities. With the policy changes meaning there were fewer work-study roles and more students in need of jobs, Cade saw the market as increasingly competitive, and he began to job hunt elsewhere. This summer he secured work with the Ohio Department of Transportation as a communications and policy intern. In October he began an intake assistant role in the Office of Civil Rights Compliance at the university. (Ohio State Director of Media and PR Chris Booker told Teen Vogue that the school could not comment on the experiences of individual students but that “all student employees and graduate associates impacted by these program changes were offered the opportunity to pursue transitioning into alternative positions at the university, as well as support in navigating that change.”)
Although he was drawn to OSU for the John Glenn College of Public Affairs’ master’s program, Cade says he might have reconsidered schools had he known that the university would bend to lawmakers’ anti-DEI efforts. While he’s concerned about how education-related legislation and policies may continue to affect his college experience, he worries most about some of his peers. College is already so hard to navigate for so many young people, said Cade. “And this is just another thing that says, ‘Oh yeah, this isn’t for me.’”
This story was published in partnership with Teen Vogue.
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by Tanishia Lavette Williams, The Hechinger Report November 4, 2025
The year I co-taught world history and English language arts with two colleagues, we were tasked with telling the story of the world in 180 days to about 120 ninth graders. We invited students to consider how texts and histories speak to one another: “The Analects” as imperial governance, “Sundiata” as Mali’s political memory, “Julius Caesar” as a window into the unraveling of a republic.
By winter, our students had given us nicknames. Some days, we were a triumvirate. Some days, we were Cerberus, the three-headed hound of Hades. It was a joke, but it held a deeper meaning. Our students were learning to make connections by weaving us into the histories they studied. They were building a worldview, and they saw themselves in it.
Designed to foster critical thinking, this teaching was deeply human. It involved combing through texts for missing voices, adapting lessons to reflect the interests of the students in front of us and trusting that learning, like understanding, unfolds slowly. That labor can’t be optimized for efficiency.
Yet, today, there’s a growing push to teach faster. Thousands of New York teachers are being trained to use AI tools for lesson planning, part of a $23 million initiative backed by OpenAI, Microsoft and Anthropic. The program promises to reduce teacher burnout and streamline planning. At the same time, a new private school in Manhattan is touting an AI-driven model that “speed-teaches” core subjects in just two hours of instruction each day while deliberately avoiding politically controversial issues.
Marketed as innovation, this stripped-down vision of education treats learning as a technical output rather than as a human process in which students ask hard questions and teachers cultivate the critical thinking that fuels curiosity. A recent analysis of AI-generated civics lesson plans found that they consistently lacked multicultural content and prompts for critical thinking. These AI tools are fast, but shallow. They fail to capture the nuance, care and complexity that deep learning demands.
When I was a teacher, I often reviewed lesson plans to help colleagues refine their teaching practices. Later, as a principal in Washington, D.C., and New York City, I came to understand that lesson plans, the documents connecting curriculum and achievement, were among the few steady examples of classroom practice. Despite their importance, lesson plans were rarely evaluated for their effectiveness.
When I wrote my dissertation, after 20 years of working in schools, lesson plan analysis was a core part of my research. Analyzing plans across multiple schools, I found that the activities and tasks included in lesson plans were reliable indicators of the depth of knowledge teachers required and, by extension, the limits of what students were asked to learn.
Reviewing hundreds of plans made clear that most lessons rarely offered more than a single dominant voice — and thus confined both what counted as knowledge and what qualified as achievement. Shifting plans toward deeper, more inclusive student learning required deliberate effort to incorporate primary sources, weave together multiple narratives and design tasks that push students beyond mere recall.
I also found that creating the conditions for such learning takes time. There is no substitute for that. Where this work took hold, students were making meaning, seeing patterns, asking why and finding themselves in the story.
That’s the transformation AI can’t deliver. When curriculum tools are trained on the same data that has long omitted perspectives, they don’t correct bias; they reproduce it. The developers of ChatGPT acknowledge that the model is “skewed toward Western views and performs best in English” and warn educators to review its content carefully for stereotypes and bias. Those same distortions appear at the systems level — a 2025 study in the World Journal of Advanced Research and Reviews found that biased educational algorithms can shape students’ educational paths and create new structural barriers.
Ask an AI tool for a lesson on westward expansion, and you’ll get a tidy narrative about pioneers and Manifest Destiny. Request a unit on the Civil Rights Movement and you may get a few lines on Martin Luther King Jr., but hardly a word about Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer or the grassroots organizers who made the movement possible. Native nations, meanwhile, are reduced to footnotes or omitted altogether.
Curriculum redlining — the systematic exclusion or downplaying of entire histories, perspectives and communities — has already been embedded in educational materials for generations. So what happens when “efficiency” becomes the goal? Whose histories are deemed too complex, too political or too inconvenient to make the cut?
None of this is theoretical. It’s already happening in classrooms across the country. Educators are under pressure to teach more with less: less time, fewer resources, narrower guardrails. AI promises relief but overlooks profound ethical questions.
Students don’t benefit from autogenerated worksheets. They benefit from lessons that challenge them, invite them to wrestle with complexity and help them connect learning to the world around them. That requires deliberate planning and professional judgment from a human who views education as a mechanism to spark inquiry.
Recently, I asked my students at Brandeis University to use AI to generate a list of individuals who embody concepts such as beauty, knowledge and leadership. The results, overwhelmingly white, male and Western, mirrored what is pervasive in textbooks.
My students responded with sharp analysis. One student created color palettes to demonstrate the narrow scope of skin tones generated by AI. Another student developed a “Missing Gender” summary to highlight omissions. It was a clear reminder that students are ready to think critically but require opportunities to do so.
AI can only do what it’s programmed to do, which means it draws from existing, stratified information and lags behind new paradigms. That makes it both backward-looking and vulnerable to reproducing bias.
Teaching with humanity, by contrast, requires judgment, care and cultural knowledge. These are qualities no algorithm can automate. When we surrender lesson planning to AI, we don’t just lose stories; we also lose the opportunity to engage with them. We lose the critical habits of inquiry and connection that teaching is meant to foster.
Tanishia Lavette Williams is the inaugural education stratification postdoctoral fellow at the Institute on Race, Power and Political Economy, a Kay fellow at Brandeis University and a visiting scholar at Harvard University.
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Too many student-parents never make it to graduation, in no small part because their campuses don’t adequately help them fit college into their lives — or even just fit in.
Yet over 3 million student-parents across the nation, myself included, are pursuing higher education, seeking the intergenerational benefits that come with earning a degree. To reap them, we must overcome many obstacles, as colleges aren’t designed for students like us.
For me, the last hurdle I had to clear was graduation itself. After years of sacrifice — not just my own, but my whole family’s — walking the stage with my four children at my graduation from the University of California, Santa Cruz was deeply important.
The university, however, didn’t understand that or account for us. When I asked to accept my diploma with my kids, I was met with resistance, a particularly tough reminder of the work institutions have left to do to meet the needs and priorities of student-parents.
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Earning my college degree in my late 30s was undoubtedly a major achievement, but so was going back for my bachelor’s in the first place — I didn’t even finish high school the first time around.
After I became a mom at 20, I earned my GED, hoping it would help me support my family. Continuing my education only got harder. I started and stopped community college more times than I can count, juggling bills, jobs, custody battles and parenting.
Finally, I transferred to UCSC, proud that I was taking this step two decades in the making and changing the trajectory of my and my family’s lives.
However, I didn’t fully realize what my education would cost my children. Used to our tight-knit Tongan community, they felt like cultural outsiders when we moved to Santa Cruz, no longer surrounded by family, our native language or familiar foods and music.
My children sacrificed their home and sense of belonging so that I could pursue this dream. As graduation approached, I knew I wanted to walk the stage with them. They had earned it just as much as I had.
Yet the administration denied my request, citing the added logistical difficulties. They suggested I bring my kids to a separate, informal celebration for those of us living in family student housing instead. The offer sounded like “be invisible or settle for less.”
I immediately started mobilizing UCSC’s Student Parent Organization, where I was president. Working with the student government, I drafted a resolution permitting student-parents to walk with their children. I reached out to alumni, administrators, fellow parents and friends for support.
Thanks to our collective voice, the dean of students changed his mind, offered an apology and committed to changing the policy going forward for all graduating student-parents. Though my kids and I were placed at the end of the ceremony, we crossed the stage together as a family.
That seed of inclusion will grow in them, just like it will for all the children of student-parents who walk that path in the future.
The next year, my mentee and friend walked with her son at the UCSC commencement, this time without pushback. The university invited them to rehearsal, and on graduation day, they had VIP seats. She was one of the first to walk, not the last.
That is the power of advocacy. It turns exclusion into inclusion. It rewrites the rules not just for one person, but for those who come after. I am proud to continue my advocacy work as a graduate student at the University of San Francisco and a member of The California Alliance for Student Parent Success.
I have since seen institutions across California make good progress on their efforts to support student-parents, but colleges and universities nationwide must still do more. At the University at Buffalo, university police chased a graduating student across the stage when he attempted to bring his infant son with him.
These stories and the momentum building in the wake of September’s National Student Parent Month should serve as a call to higher education leaders across the country to cultivate campus climates that build trust and belonging among student-parents.
This work should start before we even step foot on campus and continue until we graduate.
Institutions that truly wish to serve families will ensure that the value we bring to higher education is visible. They will account for student-parents when planning campus events and weave together support networks of faculty, staff and peers who can respond to our needs.
When we ask institutions for policies and practices to better accommodate our families, they will listen and act. They will hold themselves accountable to all of their students, parents included.
Walking the stage with my kids was a step in the right direction, albeit an uphill climb. Let’s keep going and do better by student-parents and their families.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Washington lawmakers and the Trump administration passed a major legislative package this summer that will cut funding for programs that help students from low-income backgrounds — making it far harder for these students to afford and complete college.
The leaders behind these cuts claim that they’re necessary to curb wasteful spending and keep higher education accountable. But that line of thinking is woefully misguided — and destructive — for our entire nation.
These changes will make higher education even more exclusive. And House Republicans just released a budget proposal that would further cut funding.
These policymakers are in effect turning our higher education system into a gated community for the wealthy. If they continue course, millions of young people will lose the opportunity to earn a college degree and build a more financially secure future for themselves and their families. And our workforce will be starved of much-needed qualified employees, choking our nation’s economy.
We can’t let that happen. It is time to invest in a nimble, adaptable and educated population.
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It’s important to recognize that even without a single change from Washington, students from low-income backgrounds are already struggling to access and complete college. The gaps in college attendance and completion by family income are both persistent and wide.
That’s partly because of eroding investment in the programs that help the most. Take the Pell Grant program, for example, which provides crucial aid to more than 6 million students each year. At its peak in the 1970s, the maximum Pell Grant covered more than 75 percent of the cost of attending a four-year public college. It now covers less than 30 percent.
Federal policymakers could choose to spend their energy addressing these challenges. Instead, they’re putting college out of reach for students who come from poor families.
A closer look at the recently passed reconciliation package, or so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, makes clear that it will imperil the Pell program, raise the costs of student loan repayment, make debt costlier and riskier and push some students to forgo college altogether.
All in all, the package cuts $300 billion of federal support for higher education students and borrowers. More specifically, it opens the door for more high-cost and low-quality short-term programs to participate in the Pell Grant program, endangering the program’s financial stability.
It also eliminates longstanding federal loan plans and replaces them with a system that will fuel unpredictable spikes in loan payment amounts. Many low-income borrowers will likely pay more under their new repayment terms than with their existing income-driven repayment (IDR) plans.
And that’s for the borrowers who still get federal loans. New limits will push many students into private debt with fewer protections — and higher costs for students and their families. As a result, prospective students may see loans as too risky and decide against college.
On top of that, the legislative package slashed Medicaid and SNAP benefits. Now, millions of college students are at risk of losing access to health care and affordable food — making it far more difficult for them to complete degree programs. This, too, may push many students to jump straight into the workforce so they can start generating income — sacrificing long-term earnings for short-term necessities.
Meanwhile, many state policymakers — who are now expecting less federal support — are scrambling to reconfigure budgets. That could result in less funding for higher education — which has historically been cut when state budgets get squeezed.
In the meantime, President Trump and House Republicans want to double down on policies that will keep students from low-income backgrounds out of college. The president’s FY26 budget and the House’s latest budget proposal suggest entirely eliminating Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants — which help students from low-income backgrounds fill the gaps when the Pell Grant and other grant aid do not cover the total cost of attendance.
The proposed cuts also further threaten the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) which helps find strategies to get more students to complete college. These programs could be improved, but slashing them drives up debt and drives down college enrollment.
There’s no question: These changes will be disastrous for the American Dream. Research consistently shows that a college degree is the No. 1 driver of economic mobility. Reduced access to college means trapping millions of people in poverty.
It also means ravaging our nation’s economy. If young people don’t enroll in college now, our country will soon face severe shortages of teachers, nurses, manufacturers and IT professionals.
With AI and technological change poised to fundamentally alter the labor market, we cannot simply hope that the next generation will be able to get by with more long-term debt, less knowledge and fewer skills than the previous one.
It’s unfathomable that Washington is making a higher education system that already favors the wealthy even more exclusive. We need to change our trajectory — and fast.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
This story was produced by the Associated Press and reprinted with permission.
WASHINGTON – For a generation of young Americans, choosing where to go to college — or whether to go at all — has become a complex calculation of costs and benefits that often revolves around a single question: Is the degree worth its price?
Public confidence in higher education has plummeted in recent years amid high tuition prices, skyrocketing student loans and a dismal job market — plus ideological concerns from conservatives. Now, colleges are scrambling to prove their value to students.
Borrowed from the business world, the term “return on investment” has been plastered on college advertisements across the U.S. A battery of new rankings grade campuses on the financial benefits they deliver. States such as Colorado have started publishing yearly reports on the monetary payoff of college, and Texas now factors it into calculations for how much taxpayer money goes to community colleges.
“Students are becoming more aware of the times when college doesn’t pay off,” said Preston Cooper, who has studied college ROI at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. “It’s front of mind for universities today in a way that it was not necessarily 15, 20 years ago.”
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A wide body of research indicates a bachelor’s degree still pays off, at least on average and in the long run. Yet there’s growing recognition that not all degrees lead to a good salary, and even some that seem like a good bet are becoming riskier as graduates face one of the toughest job markets in years.
A new analysis released Thursday by the Strada Education Foundation finds 70 percent of recent public university graduates can expect a positive return within 10 years — meaning their earnings over a decade will exceed that of a typical high school graduate by an amount greater than the cost of their degree. Yet it varies by state, from 53 percent in North Dakota to 82 percent in Washington, D.C. States where college is more affordable have fared better, the report says.
It’s a critical issue for families who wonder how college tuition prices could ever pay off, said Emilia Mattucci, a high school counselor at East Allegheny schools, near Pittsburgh. More than two-thirds of her school’s students come from low-income families, and many aren’t willing to take on the level of debt that past generations accepted.
Instead, more are heading to technical schools or the trades and passing on four-year universities, she said.
“A lot of families are just saying they can’t afford it, or they don’t want to go into debt for years and years and years,” she said.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been among those questioning the need for a four-year degree. Speaking at the Reagan Institute think tank in September, McMahon praised programs that prepare students for careers right out of high school.
“I’m not saying kids shouldn’t go to college,” she said. “I’m just saying all kids don’t have to go in order to be successful.”
American higher education has been grappling with both sides of the ROI equation — tuition costs and graduate earnings. It’s becoming even more important as colleges compete for decreasing numbers of college-age students as a result of falling birth rates.
Tuition rates have stayed flat on many campuses in recent years to address affordability concerns, and many private colleges have lowered their sticker prices in an effort to better reflect the cost most students actually pay after factoring in financial aid.
The other part of the equation — making sure graduates land good jobs — is more complicated.
A group of college presidents recently met at Gallup’s Washington headquarters to study public polling on higher education. One of the chief reasons for flagging confidence is a perception that colleges aren’t giving graduates the skills employers need, said Kevin Guskiewicz, president of Michigan State University, one of the leaders at the meeting.
“We’re trying to get out in front of that,” he said.
The issue has been a priority for Guskiewicz since he arrived on campus last year. He gathered a council of Michigan business leaders to identify skills that graduates will need for jobs, from agriculture to banking. The goal is to mold degree programs to the job market’s needs and to get students internships and work experience that can lead to a job.
Bridging the gap to the job market has been a persistent struggle for U.S. colleges, said Matt Sigelman, president of the Burning Glass Institute, a think tank that studies the workforce. Last year the institute, partnering with Strada researchers, found 52 percent of recent college graduates were in jobs that didn’t require a degree. Even higher-demand fields, such as education and nursing, had large numbers of graduates in that situation.
“No programs are immune, and no schools are immune,” Sigelman said.
The federal government has been trying to fix the problem for decades, going back to President Barack Obama’s administration. A federal rule first established in 2011 aimed to cut federal money to college programs that leave graduates with low earnings, though it primarily targeted for-profit colleges.
A Republican reconciliation bill passed this year takes a wider view, requiring most colleges to hit earnings standards to be eligible for federal funding. The goal is to make sure college graduates end up earning more than those without a degree.
Others see transparency as a key solution.
For decades, students had little way to know whether graduates of specific degree programs were landing good jobs after college. That started to change with the College Scorecard in 2015, a federal website that shares broad earnings outcomes for college programs. More recently, bipartisan legislation in Congress has sought to give the public even more detailed data.
Lawmakers in North Carolina ordered a 2023 study on the financial return for degrees across the state’s public universities. It found that 93 percent produced a positive return, meaning graduates were expected to earn more over their lives than someone without a similar degree.
The data is available to the public, showing, for example, that undergraduate degrees in applied math and business tend to have high returns at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, while graduate degrees in psychology and foreign languages often don’t.
Colleges are belatedly realizing how important that kind of data is to students and their families, said Lee Roberts, chancellor of UNC-Chapel Hill, in an interview.
“In uncertain times, students are even more focused — I would say rightly so — on what their job prospects are going to be,” he added. “So I think colleges and universities really owe students and their families this data.”
The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
For the first time in more than a decade, confidence in the nation’s colleges and universities is rising. Forty-two percent of Americans now say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, up from 36 percent last year.
It’s a welcome shift, but it’s certainly not time for institutions to take a victory lap.
For years, persistent concerns about rising tuition, student debt and an uncertain job market have led many to question whether college was still worth the cost. Headlines have routinely spotlighted graduates who are underemployed, overwhelmed or unsure how to translate their degrees into careers.
With the rapid rise of AI reshaping entry-level hiring, those doubts are only going to intensify. Politicians, pundits and anxious parents are already asking: Why aren’t students better prepared for the real world?
But the conversation is broken, and the framing is far too simplistic. The real question isn’t whether college prepares students for careers. It’s how. And the “how” is more complex, personal and misunderstood than most people realize.
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What’s missing from this conversation is a clearer understanding of where career preparation actually happens. It’s not confined to the classroom or the career center. It unfolds in the everyday often overlooked experiences that shape how students learn, lead and build confidence.
While earning a degree is important, it’s not enough. Students need a better map for navigating college. They need to know from day one that half the value of their experience will come from what they do outside the classroom.
To rebuild America’s trust, colleges must point beyond course catalogs and job placement rates. They need to understand how students actually spend their time in college. And they need to understand what those experiences teach them.
Ask someone thriving in their career which part of college most shaped their success, and their answer might surprise you. (I had this experience recently at a dinner with a dozen impressive philanthropic, tech and advocacy leaders.) You might expect them to name a major, a key class or an internship. But they’re more likely to mention running the student newspaper, leading a sorority, conducting undergraduate research, serving in student government or joining the debate team.
Such activities aren’t extracurriculars. They are career-curriculars. They’re the proving grounds where students build real-world skills, grow professional networks and gain confidence to navigate complexity. But most people don’t discuss these experiences until they’re asked about them.
Over time, institutions have created a false divide. The classroom is seen as the domain of learning, and career services is seen as the domain of workforce preparation. But this overlooks an important part of the undergraduate experience: everything in between.
The vast middle of campus life — clubs, competitions, mentorship, leadership roles, part-time jobs and collaborative projects — is where learning becomes doing. It’s where students take risks, test ideas and develop the communication, teamwork and problem-solving skills that employers need.
This oversight has made career services a stand-in for something much bigger. Career services should serve as an essential safety net for students who didn’t or couldn’t fully engage in campus life, but not as the launchpad we often imagine it to be.
We also need to confront a harder truth: Many students enter college assuming success after college is a given. Students are often told that going to college leads to success. They are rarely told, however, what that journey actually requires. They believe knowledge will be poured into them and that jobs will magically appear once the diploma is in hand. And for good reason, we’ve told them as much.
But college isn’t a vending machine. You can’t insert tuition and expect a job to roll out. Instead, it’s a platform, a laboratory and a proving ground. It requires students to extract value through effort, initiative and exploration, especially outside the classroom.
The credential matters, but it’s not the whole story. A degree can open doors, but it won’t define a career. It’s the skills students build, the relationships they form and the challenges they take on along the way to graduation that shape their future.
As more college leaders rightfully focus on the college-to-career transition, colleges must broadcast that while career services plays a helpful role, students themselves are the primary drivers of their future. But to be clear, colleges bear a grave responsibility here. It’s on us to reinforce the idea that learning occurs everywhere on campus, that the most powerful career preparation comes from doing, not just studying. It’s also on us to address college affordability, so that students have the time to participate in campus life, and to ensure that on-campus jobs are meaningful learning experiences.
Higher education can’t afford public confidence to dip again. The value of college isn’t missing. We’re just not looking in the right place.
Bridget Burns is the founding CEO of the University Innovation Alliance (UIA), a nationally recognized consortium of 19 public research universities driving student success innovation for nearly 600,000 students.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
LOS ANGELES — Oscar Mateo dreamed of being an artist, but after he got leukemia when he was 20, his life plans abruptly changed. The compassionate nursing care he received while hospitalized touched him so much that he decided he wanted to provide the same for others.
That impulse led him to the registered nursing program at Mt. San Antonio College in the Los Angeles County suburb of Walnut. But getting there wasn’t easy, as he had to battle competition for limited seats in one of the highest-demand fields in higher education, a career offering purpose, plentiful jobs and potentially six-figure paychecks.
Mateo was rejected three times by Mt. SAC before winning admission. To burnish his resume and win a coveted seat, he earned certification as a nursing assistant and got work experience.
“It’s so competitive and stressful,” Mateo, now 30, said. “It definitely takes a toll on yourself.”
Mateo represents a paradox bedeviling the U.S. nursing landscape. There is enormous demand for nurses, as retirement or burnout push many from the field. Despite tens of thousands of students fighting to get into nursing programs, schools can’t accommodate that demand, for two major reasons: They can’t find enough faculty to teach classes and there is a dearth of the required hands-on training opportunities in hospitals and health care facilities.
The mismatch has hit California particularly hard, triggering a state audit, legislative proposals and funding initiatives. Some nursing schools want to allow greater use of training technology to widen access — such as high-tech mannequins that simulate heart attacks and other medical conditions. Others warn against that path. In the process, tensions between public and private nursing schools have flared as they battle for resources to expand their programs.
Mt. San Antonio College, in Los Angeles County. More than half of California’s nursing school programs reported their requests for clinical placements in hospitals were denied in 2022-23. Mt. SAC lost placements at several sites, including two spots that were withdrawn right before classes started. Credit: James Bernal for The Hechinger Report
“The demand is so high but there just aren’t enough seats,” said Paul Creason, Long Beach City College dean of business, education and health sciences. “It’s critical to supply the workforce to meet the need, but there are too many obstacles and this will have ramifications for the cost and quality of health care.”
In California, only about a third of 57,987 applications by qualified applicants to nursing school were accepted in 2022-23, the most recent data available, according to the state Board of Registered Nursing. Nationwide, nursing schools turned away nearly 66,000 qualified applications for bachelor’s and graduate nursing programs in 2023, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing reported.
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California’s projected shortfall of working nurses is one of the largest in the nation, estimated to grow from 40,790 this year to 61,490 in 2035, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Shortages are projected for both registered nurses, who provide the more advanced health care skills typically acquired in a two- to four-year training program, and licensed vocational nurses, who offer more basic care after certification that usually takes one year to complete.
The most contested resource in nursing education is the hands-on clinical training required.
“You have to have these spots or your program is dead in the water,” Creason said.
California law requires students to complete at least 500 hours of direct patient care under the supervision of nursing staff at a hospital or other health care facility to graduate and qualify to take the national licensing exam. Without that, students can’t finish their degrees and schools can’t increase enrollment.
So the competition for clinical placements is fierce. Requests are soaring just as some hospitals are scaling back on training because their staff nurses are too overloaded to take on more students. More than half of the state’s nursing school programs reported their requests for clinical placements were denied in 2022-23, according to the state nursing board, and 57.2 percent of the state’s 152 registered nursing programs cited a lack of clinical placements as the top obstacle to adding more seats.
Mt. SAC, for instance, lost placements at several sites — one of them fell from 10 to six. This past semester, a hospital withdrew two spots just weeks before classes started, forcing the school to scramble for a replacement. San Antonio Regional Hospital stepped in, opening a night shift for students.
Andrew Santana instructs students on how to do an APGAR assessment on a simulated newborn baby at Mt. San Antonio College campus. Credit: James Bernal for The Hechinger Report
Public campuses argue that their students should have priority for these clinical slots. Private nursing schools — both nonprofit and for-profit — disagree, urging a level playing field.
Reports that some colleges pay for the sought-after slots have riled many campuses, and in the 2022-23 state survey, nine unnamed colleges reported they had provided “financial support” to secure a clinical placement. A 2023 state law now bans such “pay to play” schemes — but college officials say it is difficult to enforce and unclear as to what it covers. Are donations to a hospital’s foundation, for instance, prohibited? What about tuition assistance to nurses who agree to serve as instructors for that college’s students?
With resources tight, state legislators and nursing organizations have begun rallying to better support public nursing programs.
Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Legislature approved $60 million for a five-year grant program to expand community college nursing programs, including partnerships with four-year campuses for bachelor’s degrees. Beginning this year, another state law mandates health facilities to “work in good faith” with California community colleges and California State University campuses to meet their clinical placement needs.
Private institutions criticize those efforts as unfair. Samuel Merritt University, a private nonprofit in Oakland, petitioned the state board to add 72 seats to the nursing program at its Sacramento campus, but Cal State Sacramento, Sacramento City College and Sierra College told the board they opposed the request because they were losing clinical sites and worried about nurse burnout from training students. The state board approved the 72-seat increase, in August, after the university found clinical placements outside the immediate Sacramento area.
“What we find to be the most frustrating is the state schools, the four-year institutions and the two-year institutions, they’re kind of banding together to prevent any growth by the private schools,” said Steven Rush, dean of Samuel Merritt’s college of nursing.
Creason, of Long Beach City College, argues that community colleges should get priority for state funding and clinical placements because they deliver quality nursing education at a significantly lower cost than private programs, and typically to students who reflect the state’s cultural and linguistic diversity.
California nurses’ organizations agree, saying that community colleges and CSU campuses in particular offer a pipeline to nursing jobs for lower-income, first-generation students of color and that these graduates provide culturally sensitive care.
Creason said the total cost for an LBCC two-year associate degree in nursing – the college’s most popular major along with business – is about $5,000. Under a newly established partnership with Cal State Long Beach to jointly prepare students for a four-year bachelor’s degree in nursing, the total cost would be about $43,000, he said.
But the more affordable public nursing programs are also far more difficult to get into. Long Beach’s admission rate is about 3.3 percent, with room for 80 students among 2,400 applicants each year, although the partnership with Cal State Long Beach will allow it to grow to 120 seats in about two years, Creason said.
That ease of entry is why Oscar Mateo was close to enrolling at West Coast before finally winning admission to Mt. SAC on his fourth try. He said he would have needed to take out a loan of more than $100,000 to afford West Coast but was so driven to become a nurse he would have been willing to make that investment. He was ecstatic when he got his financial aid letter and saw that state grants and fee waivers would cover the entire cost of his nursing program aside from books.
“I was so happy. I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Once I was in Mt. SAC, it was a no-brainer to go to a community college. The low cost made it so enticing and the respect the school has from the hospitals are big reasons for attending this program over others.”
Student Diva Bailey using a virtual reality headset to do a psych evaluation of a simulated patient at Mt. San Antonio College campus. The technology, which is used in many states, allows nursing students to practice diagnosing and treating medical conditions in a low-stakes environment. Credit: James Bernal for The Hechinger Report
For Ray Ayranian, the heftier tuition and fees at American Career College, a private, for-profit institution, are worth it. Ayranian, who was inspired to pursue nursing after seeing the care given his sister when she underwent neurosurgery, started out at Pasadena City College. But he said he wasn’t a great student and thought the private-school route would be easier — and faster. He and his parents took out a loan for about $30,000 to pay for the 12-month licensed vocational nurse program, he said, and he plans to pay off the debt by working extra shifts once he earns his degree and gets a job.
“I just wanted to do something fast because I’m a pretty hands-on person,” he said.
Representatives for ACC and West Coast declined to comment.
One potential solution to ease the crunch is state financial incentives to hospitals and other medical facilities to provide more clinical placement slots. Virginia offers tax-free grants to nurses and other health professionals who mentor nursing students, while Georgia, Maryland,Colorado, South Carolina and Alabama are among states that offer tax credits or other financial incentives. Federal legislation to give a $2,000 tax credit to nurses who provide at least 200 hours of clinical training is pending.
Another idea is expanding the use of technology. At Mt. SAC, for instance, classrooms have high-tech mannequins that can be programmed to blink, shriek and simulate a variety of medical conditions, including heart attacks, bleeding, respiratory failure — even giving birth. Virtual and augmented reality programs offer interactive 3D environments with animation or actors simulating patients. The technology, which is used in many states, allows nursing students to practice diagnosing and treating medical conditions in a low-stakes environment.
Given the shortage of clinical placements, some nursing educators argue that accredited programs with high student licensing exam pass rates should be allowed to balance simulation training with hands-on training, rather than meet the state’s minimum 500-hour requirement.
Michelle Mahon of the National Nurses United union says better working conditions for nurses would draw back more of those who got burned out and left the field. That, she said, would help ease the pressure to create more nursing school seats.
At Mt. SAC this summer, a group of students doing simulation training was directed to examine a mannequin that was simulating a 72-year-old woman who had undergone gall bladder surgery and returned home. The mannequin, nicknamed Apollo and made of silicon, synthetic plastic polymer and other materials, sported hard legs but a soft, rubbery feel to most of the rest of the body.
The clinical instructor, Maria Stefanidis from nearby San Antonio Regional Hospital, assumed the voice of “Mrs. Smith,” complaining of nausea and sharp pain in her abdominal area.
Paul Song, playing the role of a home health nurse, checked the mannequin’s blood pressure, heart rate, temperature and respiration – all computer programmed. Stefanidis reminded him to assess the incision area for redness and warmth, a potential sign of infection, and guided him on the proper way to check for abdominal sounds. He told Stefanidis he suspected a blockage in the intestines and possible infection because of the elevated vital signs.
“Good assessment,” Stefanidis said. “So what are we going to do about that?”
“The best course of action would be to call the doctor and let him know,” Song said.
Andrew Santana (left) instructing students in performing a simulated delivery of a baby at Mt. San Antonio College campus. Credit: James Bernal for The Hechinger Report
Andrew Santana, Mt. SAC’s Simulation Lab specialist and instructor, said the campus plans to expand its technology offerings with a new health careers building and advancements such as mannequins programmed with artificial intelligence that are able to spontaneously converse with students.
Eileen Fry-Bowers, dean of nursing at the private nonprofit University of San Francisco, is among those who believe that accredited programs with high student licensing exam pass rates should have more flexibility in balancing simulation and hands-on training. No evidence supports the state’s requirement of 500 hours of direct patient care as a threshold for positive patient outcomes, she said.
“This idea that direct care is the be-all and end-all of clinical education is not supported by research,” she said.
Others say technology can never replace the human-to-human connection. Nicole Ong, a Mt. SAC nursing student who worked as a certified nursing assistant before starting her RN program, said experience with real people is crucial for learning how to bond with patients in their most vulnerable moments.
“You have to get trust from a patient and you can’t get that from a mannequin,” Ong said.
Contact editor Lawrie Mifflin at (212) 678-4078 or mifflin@hechingerreport.org.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
WATSONVILLE, Calif. — Gavin Abundis watched as firefighter Adrian Chairez demonstrated how he uses pulleys and harnesses to rappel down buildings. “You’ve probably seen it in the movies where they’re going down ‘Mission: Impossible’ style,” Chairez said with a laugh one day this past winter as he prepared to step off a tower. “We get to do that.”
Abundis, a then-senior at Aptos High School in Santa Cruz County’s Pajaro Valley Unified School District, has a friend whose home burned down a few years ago in a fire sparked by lightning. He said it’s pretty common to know someone who has been affected by fires in California, especially as they become more frequent and intense because of climate change. That drew him to this class on fire technology, and may steer his career.
“Knowing that there’s something that I can do about it to serve my community definitely encourages me to pursue this career,” said Abundis.
Demand for the course has grown so much in recent years that the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, which jointly runs the class with the Watsonville Fire Department, doubled the number of classes offered, from two to four, this school year. “There was a time when we would go into the schools and recruit students,” said Rudy Lopez Sr., fire chief of the Watsonville department. “Now, they just sign up.”
As climate change alters the environment and economies, the need is growing for jobs that help prepare for, respond to and lessen damage caused by fires, floods and other natural disasters. That’s led schools and community colleges to explore how to prepare students for careers in such fields as fire science, protecting and restoring watersheds and other ecosystems, forestry management and search and rescue. In some cases, student interest is driving the new courses — surveys show teenagers and younger adults are more environmentally conscious than older people and more likely to support action on climate change.
Watsonville, Calif., Fire Chief Rudy Lopez Sr. talks with students during a Fire Youth Academy class at Watsonville Fire Station No. 2. Credit: Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report
Kate Kreamer, executive director of Advance CTE, a nonprofit that supports state leaders who oversee career and technical education programs, said more school districts are offering climate-related CTE courses, but it’s challenging to find statistics because the issue is so politicized and because what the classes are called differs by school, district and state. One example of that growth: A “resiliency careers in forestry” program, which trains people as foresters, fire program managers and log truck drivers at five California community colleges, enrolls some 700 students compared with 37 when it launched three years ago, according to the Foundation for California Community Colleges.
Students in Santa Cruz’s yearlong fire science course say they love that it’s so hands-on. They practice putting on and taking off more than 70 pounds of equipment in under 90 seconds, watch water cannons blast from the top of fire engines and get a chance to hold “attack lines,” 200-foot-long water hoses. They also learn about the specialized vocabulary of firefighting, the range of jobs available and the certifications that are required. The course helps expose students to careers in firefighting, which is facing a significant shortage of people to fill jobs in California and some other regions of the country. In the state, entry-level jobs pay between roughly $50,000 and $100,000 per year, according to the statewide group California Professional Firefighters.
Charlotte Morgan, a soft-spoken then-senior from Aptos in the Watsonville class, said she wanted to take this course specifically because of her interest in climate change: “Growing up in Santa Cruz, we spend so much time outside and we care so much about it, and I want to protect that.”
Her friend Bellamy Breen said she felt the same way, though she’s interested in working on water conservation issues. “With climate change there’s more droughts, there’s more saltwater intrusion, and with all the agriculture here, it’s very important,” she said.
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Watsonville firefighter Adrian Chairez rappels from the top of a building during a Fire Youth Academy class in Watsonville. Credit: Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report
President Joe Biden championed such initiatives as the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which invested billions of federal dollars in supporting jobs that tackle climate change, including clean energy manufacturing, water infrastructure projects and wildfire prevention and preparedness efforts. Under President Donald Trump, who calls climate change a hoax, there has been a swift reversal of those initiatives. In recent months, the federal government has let go of hundreds of climate scientists, halted research funding and canceled 400 grants to help communities prepare for more extreme weather events.
Yet for communities that have been hit with natural disasters, there is a demand for jobs that transcends politics, even in conservative communities where climate change is sometimes dismissed as fake science.
John Gossett, president of Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College in North Carolina, said that after Hurricane Helene devastated his region last year, college presidents in Mississippi and Louisiana who have endured catastrophic natural disasters told him to expect an enrollment drop of 40 percent to 50 percent. But Gossett said that while enrollment in several programs has remained flat, courses in fields that were highly visible during the hurricane — such as fire and rescue, EMT and paramedics and nursing — have drawn more interest from students.
Police officers played a big role during the disaster, participating in search and rescue missions and directing traffic. Gossett said the college had to double its number of basic law enforcement training cohorts from two to four this semester in response to the unexpected demand. It also reinstated a course in geomatics, or land surveying, and added a class in agri permaculture, an approach to land management that imitates natural ecosystems in rebuilding. The college’s construction program offers additional environmentally friendly certifications, including in green buildings and solar technology.
Gossett sees a strong link between these in-demand courses and economic development of the region, even though there is no mention of climate change in course descriptions. “It’s in our mission, it’s what we do,” he said. “We’re trying to help people get to a better place in life, where they can make more money and have more options. And all of that is wrapped around workforce development.”
Southeastern Kentucky has also been hit recently by disasters, including catastrophic floods in 2021, 2022 and 2025 that led to a devastating number of deaths, unsalvageable homes and mud-filled businesses and school buildings. It’s the region served by Hazard Community and Technical College, with 4,400 students across campuses in Central Appalachia. “You just can’t believe how much water there was, there was 6 feet of water in one of our buildings,” recalled its president, Jennifer Lindon.
Students wait as firefighters prepare a demonstration during a Fire Youth Academy class in Watsonville. Credit: Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report
She said the college is rethinking course offerings to be more responsive to the disasters. Hazard offers an annual firefighter training, but water rescue is becoming such an important part of the job that the college is adding a swift water rescue component, focused on saving people from fast-moving floods, for first responders from across the state. Its classes in construction are changing too, to incorporate information on how to rebuild homes on higher ground to better withstand winds and floods. Because of the demand, Hazard now runs several construction courses simultaneously, and the curriculum is accelerated — what would have taken 16 weeks now takes six.
Lindon said there are waiting lists for Hazard’s heavy equipment and line worker classes, as the community clears debris and rebuilds infrastructure. The college is also designing a new course on water treatment systems, after a plant flooded, leaving several counties with no drinking water for days. Lindon said the county is building a new treatment facility, which means there will be several jobs available.
“It’s time to really sit down and think about how we plan for 10 years, 20 years, because I don’t think that these disasters are one-offs,” she said. “What we thought was a 1,000-year flood has happened in three of the last five years. So it’s a different time for sure. Most of us all really love this area. We want to stay here, so we need to figure out how to better protect it.”
Other institutions are seeing the need to reach out to students to get them interested in these careers early on. John Boyd leads Mayland Community College, about an hour’s drive from Asheville, North Carolina, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene.
Boyd’s community is still cleaning up from the storm, and the college has lost students as many residents moved out of the area. But it hired a firefighter instructor to teach the area’s all-volunteer firefighters and work with K-12 schools to expose younger students to careers important in the region. The college is also building an environmental science center featuring exhibits for children to give them a better understanding of local environmental changes, like how physical damage during Hurricane Helene caused rivers to become permanently wider and deeper.
In this deep red area, no one mentions climate change. “We’re a very, very conservative area here,” said Boyd. “We focus on what it is and what we do now, not how it got there.”
The college is also training operators of large machinery like backhoes and bulldozers. Half of the trees in one local county were downed in the storm, and other debris still needs to be cleared. “That timber in another year is going to become a massive fire hazard,” said Boyd. “For the next few years we’re going to have a lot of fuel laying on the ground.”
Kreamer, with Advance CTE, said disaster-related coursework is one piece of a bigger shift, with high schools around the country altering courses in fields as diverse as construction, HVAC, fashion technology and cooking to adapt for climate change. Matt Siegelman, president of Burning Glass Institute, which analyzes labor market data, said many traditional jobs now require an understanding of green technology. Construction, for example, increasingly relies on sustainable materials, energy-efficient designs and newer construction techniques. Green jobs are growing at about 2 percent a year, but traditional construction jobs that require some green skills are growing much faster, he said.
Kreamer said that as demand for these roles grows, a number of challenges must still be overcome, including improving collaboration between education and industries and between community colleges and K-12 schools. “You can only do so much by reskilling,” she said. “Adults have to look at the next generation as part of that pipeline strategy,” by introducing students to career options in elementary and middle school.
Jack Widman is dragged on the floor during a demonstration on how a firefighter would rescue someone during the Fire Youth Academy class in Watsonville. Credit: Minh Connors for The Hechinger Report
In firefighting, career opportunities differ by geography, with rural areas often relying on volunteer squads and larger cities on paid workers. Concerns about the health risks facing wildfire firefighters have also been intensifying.
In California, more than 6,500 wildfires have broken out so far in 2025, putting this on pace to be one of the worst years for fires on record. In Santa Cruz, district administrators expect more than 110 students to complete the fire science program this school year, compared with 57 last year.
Students say they learn not just about fighting fires, but also about standing up for others, persevering and not getting discouraged. “It’s super-valuable life advice,” said Jack Widman, a then-senior, during last winter’s class at the Watsonville fire station. Like his classmate Gavin Abundis, Widman is considering a career in firefighting.
“Firefighting doesn’t solve climate change,” added Abundis, “but I feel I’m part of the solution.”
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, via Signal at CarolineP.83 or on email at preston@hechingerreport.org.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Remiah Ward’s shift at the SmartStyle salon inside Walmart was almost over, and she’d barely made $30 in tips from the haircuts she’d done that day. It wasn’t unusual — a year after her graduation from beauty school, tips plus minimum wage weren’t enough to cover her rent.
She scarcely had time to eat and sleep before she had to drive back to the same Walmart in central Florida to stock shelves on the night shift. That job paid $14 an hour, but it meant she sometimes spent 18 hours a day in the same building. She worked six days a week but still struggled to catch up on bills and sleep.
The admissions officer at the American Institute of Beauty, where she enrolled straight out of high school, had sold her on a different dream. She would easily earn enough to pay back the $10,000 she borrowed to attend, she said she was told. Ward had no way of knowing that stylists from her school earn $20,200 a year, on average, four years after graduating. Seven years later, her debt, plus interest, is still unpaid.
In July, Republicans in Congress pushed through policies aimed at ensuring that what happened to Ward wouldn’t happen to other Americans on the government’s dime; colleges whose graduates don’t earn at least as much as someone with a high school diploma will now risk losing access to federal student loans. But one group managed to slip through the cracks — thousands of schools like the American Institute of Beauty were exempt.
Remiah Ward worked two jobs while trying to make it as a hair stylist but never made enough to pay her all her bills and has had to put her dream career on hold. Credit: Courtesy Remiah Ward
Certificate schools succeeded in getting a carve-out. The industry breathed a collective sigh of relief, and with good reason. At least 1,280 certificate-granting programs, which enrolled more than 220,000 students, would have been at risk of losing federal student loan funding if they had been included in the bill, according to a Hechinger Report analysis of federal data. [See table.] About 80% of those are for-profit programs, and 45 percent are cosmetology schools.
“There is this very strange donut hole in accountability where workforce programs are held accountable, two-year degree programs are held accountable, but everything in between gets off without any accountability,” said Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute.
The schools spared are known as certificate programs and, with their promise of an affordable and relatively quick path to economic security, are the fastest growing part of higher education. They usually take about a year to complete and train people to be hair-stylists, welders, medical assistants and cooks, among other jobs.
As with traditional colleges, there are big differences in quality among certificate programs. Some hair stylists can make a middle-class living if they work in a busy salon. But for people who have to pay back hefty student loans, the low wages for stylists in the early years can be an insurmountable obstacle.
Ward found herself facing that dilemma. When she could no longer sustain the lack of sleep from her double shifts at Walmart, she pressed pause on her styling career and took a job with Amazon, loading and unloading planes. She wasn’t ready to give up her dream career, though, so in addition to her 10-hour days moving boxes, she took part-time gigs at local hair salons. She didn’t have family to help pay rent, not to mention loan payments, so she couldn’t afford to work fulltime at a salon, which is essential to build up a regular clientele — and bigger tips. Without that, she couldn’t get much beyond minimum wage.
A representative from the American Institute of Beauty denied that Ward was told she would easily repay her loan.
“No admissions representative, not at AIB or elsewhere, would ever make such a statement,” Denise Herman, general counsel and assistant vice president of AIB, said in an email.
The high cost of many for-profit cosmetology schools — tuition can be upward of $20,000, usually for a one-year program — can leave former students mired in debt. In May, the government released data showing 850 colleges where at least a third of borrowers haven’t made a loan payment for 90 days or more, putting them on track to default. About 42 percent of those were for-profit cosmetology and barbering schools (including AIB).
Brittany Mcnew says she loves working as a stylist but that her income takes a hit when traffic is slow in her salon in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Credit: Meredith Kolodner/The Hechinger Report
Herman blamed the Biden administration policy that after the pandemic let borrowers forgo payments without any penalty.
“Debtors became ‘comfortable’ not making payments,” said Herman. “AIB provides the graduate with the information graduates need to make their payments. What that graduate decides to pay, or not pay, is not influenced by AIB.”
Under the “big beautiful bill” passed in July, two- and four-year colleges must ensure that, after four years, graduates on average make at least as much as someone in their state who has only a high school diploma. The colleges must inform students if they fail that test, and if it happens for two out of three years, the college will be ineligible to receive federal loan funds.
Some for-profit certificate schools lobbied hard for an exemption. The American Association of Career Schools, which represents proprietary cosmetology schools, spent $120,000 lobbying the Education Department and Congress, including on the “big beautiful bill,” in the first six months of this year. At the group’s major lobbying event in April, Sen. Bill Cassidy, chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, was the keynote speaker.
Cassidy declined to answer questions about why certificate programs were excluded, but a fact sheet from his committee noted that they are already covered by something else, the gainful employment rule, which is also being challenged by the for-profit cosmetology industry.
That federal gainful employment regulation, updated in 2023, requires in essence that graduates from career-oriented schools earn enough to be able to pay back their loans and earn more than a high school graduate. It also requires that consumers, like Ward, be given more information about how graduates from all colleges fare in the workplace.
The rule posed an existential threat to a huge swath of cosmetology schools.
In 2023, the American Association of Career Schools sued to block the gainful employment rule.
“AACS supports fair and reasonable accountability measures,” Cecil Kidd, the AACS’s executive director, said in an email. “However, we strongly object to arbitrary or discriminatory policies such as the US Department of Education’s Gainful Employment rule, which unfairly targets career schools while exempting many public and private non-profit institutions that fail to meet comparable outcomes.”
He pointed to public comments in which AACS has argued that the rule imposes an unfair burden on cosmetology schools since stylists are predominantly women, who are more likely to have “personal commitments” that affect their earnings, and who rely on tips that are often pocketed as unreported income.
Cameron Vandenboom is a successful hair stylist but says the high cost of her private beauty school wasn’t worth thousands of dollars in student debt: “I absolutely should have gone to community college.” Credit: Courtesy Shanna Kaye Photo
In a twist that surprised advocates on both sides, the Education Department in May asked the court to effectively dismiss AACS’ lawsuit.
If the court rules in favor of the cosmetology schools, certificate programs will be free of all accountability requirements on their graduates’ earning levels, because they got the carveout in July.
Even if the court rules against cosmetology schools, advocates are pessimistic that the Trump administration will implement the gainful rules. The first Trump administration got rid of the original rules back in 2019 and Nicholas Kent, now the U.S. undersecretary of education, was previously the chief policy officer for Career Education Colleges and Universities, or CECU, the trade group that represents for-profit colleges, including certificate programs. He is a well-known critic of the rule.
“I would be very surprised, if the unlikely scenario plays out that the Biden rule is upheld, that this Department of Education would just say, OK, the court has spoken,” said Jason Altmire, CECU’s executive director. “We are not opposed to accountability for certificate programs, so long as it’s fair to everybody and we have a voice in how you’re measuring programs.”
Altmire said CECU didn’t lobby for certificate programs to be carved out of Congress’ bill, but did argue against the earnings formula that Congress landed on. Altmire said it doesn’t take into account part-time work and the gender gap in wages.
One objection from AACS, raised by CECU as well, is that the earnings measured don’t include tips, which are crucial to hair stylists’ income. Analyzed without including tips, 576 of 724 cosmetology schools in the Hechinger Report analysis would fail Congress’ earnings test. But even if tips were included and raised stylists’ income by 20 percent, 526 cosmetology schools would still fail.
Earlier this year, Remiah Ward made the difficult decision to leave Florida and move to Kentucky, where the cost of living was more forgiving. She’s working from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. at an aluminum factory for $19.50 an hour.
One day, she might go back to styling after her debt is paid off. Like many former beauty school students, she wishes she’d had more information when she decided to enroll.
“They really sugar-coated it. I was 18 years old, and I needed a trade that I was already pretty good at,” said Ward, who is now 26. “Everybody thinks they’re going to make a high return, and it’s just not the reality.”
Marina Villeneuve contributed data analysis to this story.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Schools that train hairstylists, dental assistants and health aides will be able to keep getting federal student loan dollars even if the professionals they turn out don’t end up earning any more than a high school graduate.
That’s because programs like those, which don’t end in a college degree, were granted an exemption from new accountability measures under President Donald Trump’s ”big, beautiful bill.”
A Hechinger Report analysis of federal data found at least 1,280 such certificate programs could have been at risk of their students losing access to federal student loans — but a successful lobbying effort excluded them from the accountability measures.
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Under the new law, most graduates of associate, bachelor’s and graduate degree programs must earn at least as much as someone who has only a high school diploma. If programs fail to hit that benchmark for two out of three years, their students will no longer be eligible for federal student loans. (And the schools must warn students of this possibility if they miss the mark for just one year). Without that borrowing power, many students could not afford to attend. And without those students, some of the schools might not survive.
Using the table below, see which certificate programs might have been flagged under the Trump law if not for the exemption. If graduates of a particular program ended up earning less than adults with only a high school diploma, that program could have faced losing eligibility for federal student loans under the Trump law.
Methodology
What exactly does the “big, beautiful bill” call for?
The legislation requires the Department of Education to compare earnings of working adults who have only a high school diploma to the earnings of adults four years after they complete a degree program or graduate certificate. If a postsecondary program’s graduates fail to outearn adults with only high school degrees for two out of three years, students can no longer obtain federal student loans to attend that program.
The law also sets up an appeals process and a way for programs to apply to regain eligibility for federal student loans.
What data was analyzed?
The law directs the education secretary to use census data to calculate median earnings for working adults with only a high school degree in the state where a program is located. The Department of Education will release regulations that spell out exactly how to do that math. For example, the law does not spell out whether it will look at census data averaged out over 12 months or a longer period of time.
For earnings data for high school graduates, The Hechinger Report relied on calculations from the Department of Education, which were derived from the 2022 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates Public Use Microdata Sample from the U.S. Census Bureau.
To calculate median earnings for graduates, the law directs the Education Department to put together earnings data for a cohort of at least 30 graduates who received federal student aid for postsecondary education — which typically includes grants, loans or work-study. Graduates are excluded if they’re currently enrolled in another higher education program. If there are fewer than 30 students in a cohort, the Education Department can lump together several years of data to get to 30 students.
To get earnings data for graduates of certificate programs, Hechinger used a federal database known as College Scorecard. We downloaded field of study data for the 2022-23 school year. From this data, The Hechinger Report extracted information about certificate programs, at their main campuses, and included only programs that had median earnings data. The federal database suppresses earnings data for small programs. That left 4,431 currently operating certificate programs.
How was a program determined to be at possible risk of failing the accountability measure?
For each program, The Hechinger Report compared median graduate earnings to the high school graduate earnings data of the state where the program was located. If the graduates earned less, the program was considered to be at risk.
Under the law, postsecondary programs that don’t meet the earnings benchmark for one year have to inform all current students that they are at risk of losing their eligibility for federal student loans.
Are there any limitations to the data?
The “big, beautiful bill” takes online programs into account by considering whether students live in the same state where their academic program is based. Under the law, student earnings are compared with national data rather than state data when fewer than half of enrolled students live in the state where the school is located, which may be the case for online programs.
The Hechinger Report’s analysis instead compares every program with state earnings. That’s because the College Scorecard field of study data set is limited and only includes information about graduates employed within the same state as the institution, not whether enrolled students live in the same state as the program. In addition, College Scorecard data provides earnings data for all graduates without a breakdown for whether they receive federal aid.
Also, the Hechinger database looks at the available median earnings of all students four years after graduation for the school year 2022-23, regardless of the number of graduates. Though College Scorecard suppresses data on smaller programs, median earnings data is available for programs with 16 or more working graduates. The “big, beautiful bill” directs the Department of Education to instead lump together years of data to create cohorts of at least 30 students.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
GRESHAM, Ore. — When Ken Perez was 24, he quit his construction job and moved back in with his parents so he could give college another try.
He chipped in on some bills, but it was otherwise free housing, allowing him to devote himself to the video production classes he was taking at Gresham’s Mt. Hood Community College. It was his second go-around at Mt. Hood — he went one term right after high school. This time, he was ready to take school more seriously.
Then an electrical fire made his family home unlivable, forcing him, his parents and his older sister to move into a rental. Distressed, Perez struggled to find peace and calm in the unfamiliar space and considered dropping out again, until he learned about a promising new place for local college students to live.
This place, tucked behind a Swiss-German restaurant called Heidi’s Delicious Food Lounge and across the street from Dragon Palace Restaurant, is an almost 40-year-old building that’s been given new life. What was first the Pony Soldier Inn, and later the Ponderosa Inn, was bought by a nonprofit in 2023 and reincarnated as Abigail Court, an affordable housing complex with 75 studio apartments for college students.
Perez, who moved in last February, finally had a place he could call home. He shares it with his girlfriend, who is also a student, and a tiny, butterscotch-colored terrier named Tila, an emotional support pet he adopted to help him cope after the fire. They pay $950 per month, while the average rent for a studio apartment in Gresham costs about $400 more than that, according to Zillow.
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The two-story hotel-turned-apartment complex is addressing one of the fastest-growing problems in higher education: rising housing costs and housing insecurity among college students.
Ken Perez, a recent graduate of Mt. Hood Community College and a resident at the affordable student housing complex Abigail Court, enjoys spending time in the building’s courtyard with his emotional support dog, Tila. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
“We see that the cost of housing — whether that’s rent or room and board or whatever housing arrangements — tends to be the highest cost that students face, even higher than tuition in many cases, particularly at community colleges,” said Mark Huelsman, the director of policy and advocacy at the Hope Center for Student Basic Needs, a research and policy organization based at Temple University.
Though student housing is often thought of as an issue at four-year colleges, finding and keeping a place to live can be a particular challenge for community college students — many of whom come from low-income backgrounds and don’t have family financial support, or have children or other caretaking responsibilities.
College and community leaders across the country are wrestling with the problem. In Tacoma, Washington, the local housing authority tested giving vouchers to housing-insecure students at a local community college. In college towns including Berkeley, California; Austin, Texas; and Syracuse, New York, students live in shared off-campus co-op houses, where they pay monthly dues to cover the mortgage, taxes, insurance and groceries.
About half of all community college students experienced some form of housing insecurity in the past year, according to recent survey data from the Hope Center. That could mean that they’ve struggled to pay rent or utilities, have been summoned to appear in housing court, have lived in an overcrowded house or apartment or had to move in with others because of financial problems.
The same survey, from 2023-24, found that about 15 percent of community college students had experienced homelessness in the previous year. The survey’s definition of homelessness was fairly broad: students who reported being homeless, sleeping outdoors or sleeping in a vehicle or in temporary housing including shelters, hotels (not for vacation) or group homes.
In the Portland area, the need for housing among students is so great that when Abigail Court’s community manager Steven Larkin recently listed one apartment, it had nine applicants within 20 minutes.
“I wish we had a third floor, I really do. But unfortunately not,” Larkin said. “There’s definitely a big, massive need in this area.”
Steven Larkin, the community manager at Abigail Court, said there is major demand for affordable housing for college students. Many of the building’s residents are low income and benefit from resources such as an in-house food pantry. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
Abigail Court is a project of College Housing Northwest, a nonprofit that works on cutting student expenses by offering low-cost housing in the Portland metro area. The organization, which owns six buildings in the area, rents to roughly 1,000 students who are enrolled at least half-time in college, trade schools or online programs. It doesn’t require an extensive credit history or a co-signer. Abigail Court, which opened last fall, is a 12-minute bus ride from Mt. Hood Community College.
At Mt. Hood, which serves urban and rural communities east of Portland, 3 in 5 students experience housing instability and 1 in 5 experience homelessness, according to a 2024 survey by the college.
Bhaktirose Dawdy, the college’s director of student basic needs initiatives, said it has become clear not only that there’s a significant need for low-cost student housing, but that all kinds of students would benefit.
That includes athletes, straight-A students and students pursuing medical careers who have in-person clinical requirements, as well as students who moved from more rural areas but cannot keep up with higher rent in the more urban area, Dawdy said.
Dawdy, who has spent much of her career working with homeless youth, said she recalls daydreaming about a place where young people could live while they got an education: At first they would pay nothing, but work up to paying rent as they found stability. It was a lofty idea she’d discuss with co-workers. Now, seeing it in action, she believes this solution will help keep people from needing public benefits in the future.
Linda García, executive director at the Center for Community College Student Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin, said community college students can be derailed by obstacles unrelated to academics, including basic needs insecurity.
“Students are bringing their hopes, aspirations and dreams along that journey, but to get to that finish line, they have hurdles that they have to jump through,” García said. “Some of those hurdles could be experiences that they have on campus, or maybe it’s experiences that they’re having off campus that are preventing them from moving forward.”
In Portland, the cost of living is now 17 percent higher than the national average, according to Payscale, a salary data website, making it difficult to afford even for college students who also work. Abigail Court is just outside Portland in Gresham, where the cost of living is about 6 percent higher than the national average, Payscale shows.
Abigail Court, a renovated former hotel in Oregon, is now a 75-unit affordable housing complex for college students. Credit: Olivia Sanchez/The Hechinger Report
Ash Perrine, 33, said most of their education at Portland Community College is covered by a Pell Grant and scholarships. They were progressing toward a degree in addiction counseling, they said, until the beginning of this year, when they had a falling-out with roommates. They stayed with friends, in a hotel and in their truck and postponed the internship portion of their program because of the stress of their living situation, they said.
After about six weeks, Perrine learned about College Housing Northwest and moved into Abigail Court — about a 45-minute bus ride to the PCC Southeast campus with no transfers.
“Having the stability of housing really means I can exceed at my studies rather than just try and get by,” Perrine said. “I know where I’m going every evening, and I can save my mental effort for, you know, making an excellent midterm presentation.”
College Housing Northwest used a $6 million state housing grant to buy the old Pony Soldier Inn. It spent another $1.6 million in grant money to gut and remodel it into Abigail Court, said Alex Wallace, real estate development manager at CHNW.
Huelsman, of the Hope Center, said that there’s a great need around the country to develop long-term solutions like Abigail Court, as well as short-term solutions for students who need help to get them off the streets for a few nights. Both kinds of solutions can be costly.
“For colleges, it can be hard to figure out how to prioritize resources,” Huelsman said. “Do you put resources towards helping students who literally don’t have anywhere to live and are sleeping in their cars or couchsurfing, and providing interventions to help them? Or, are you putting resources towards making it so more students in the future will have access to housing?”
The Tacoma Housing Authority housing vouchers program ran from 2014 to 2021, when officials decided they could better “improve access to housing resources for students and their families by investing in existing systems rather than creating brand-new programs,” according to the housing authority’s website.
The co-op model being tried in many college towns across the country provides low-cost housing in an entirely different way, said Syd Burke, the director of community engagement for the North American Students of Cooperation. Instead of renting, students technically own a share of the place where they’re living, though they don’t own their room or unit outright. The homes or dorm-style buildings are governed by a board, and everyone who lives there can vote on big decisions, Burke said.
The association, known as NASCO, supports 34 co-op systems nationwide. NASCO asks that co-ops be within commuting distance from a college or university without specifying how close. And the co-ops do not always require that all residents be college students, Burke said.
NASCO has one member co-op in Oregon, in Eugene, about a 2.5-hour drive south of Portland, best suited to serve students at the University of Oregon or Lane Community College.
Along with residences like Abigail Court, College Housing Northwest also offers the Affordable Rents for College Students program, which cuts rent even more or altogether. Many of its buildings have food pantries, too.
Valerie Micohn, 19, who moved into Abigail Court in late April, said the food pantry helped her make ends meet before she landed a job in early August.
In a TripAdvisor review from 2014, a photo of the Pony Soldier Inn; the hotel has since been renovated to provide affordable housing for students. Credit: TripAdvisor.com
Micohn, a student at Mt. Hood Community College, didn’t expect to be on her own at 19, but living with family and roommates had become tense and uncomfortable. When one of her professors mentioned housing opportunities with CHNW, Micohn jumped at the chance.
Being in college has allowed Micohn to explore new aspects of her identity and realize that she’s transgender. Having her own apartment has given her space to settle into this newly discovered part of herself, she said.
And she’s discovered other joys that come with independence.
“I know it’s the smallest thing, but just being able to put on music and dance in the middle of your own apartment, it’s a very freeing feeling,” she said. “I never really got to feel that.”
Larkin said he’s working to make Abigail Court feel like a community for all residents, posting information about free activities and resources on a laundry room bulletin board. He regularly hosts events, including a grab-and-go breakfast during finals week, craft nights and a little carnival at the end of July.
Perez finished his associate degree in video production at Mt. Hood Community College at the end of the spring semester and will begin studying film at Portland State University in late September. Although it’s about an hour away depending on traffic, Perez said there’s a good chance he’ll stay at Abigail Court anyway.
It’s been a lifeline, he said. And based on what he’s heard from his neighbors’ descriptions of histories of unstable or unaffordable living situations, he believes it has been one for them, too.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Every person deserves a place close to home where they can learn, grow and build a better future. In rural areas, that place is often a community college.
But in today’s environment, community colleges are under threat. Enrollment has been declining for most of the past 15 years as increasing numbers of Americans question the value of higher education. Recent reductions in federal support for college programs and for low-income Americans will almost certainly create additional pressure on community colleges to deliver education more effectively and efficiently.
But improving delivery alone will not be enough to regain trust, enrollment and government investment. Rural community colleges must become rural development hubs, delivering value by bridging economic, social and civic sectors to address regional challenges.
Given their recognition and convening power in their regions, rural colleges are well-positioned to serve this role. As trusted pillars of the community, they can address complex problems in unique ways, from developing talent for employers to increasing civic and economic opportunities for residents.
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1. Think beyond the institution’s short-term enrollment interests and commit to strengthening the regional economy.
When Southwest Wisconsin Technical College learned that students in its agriculture program could meet employer needs and earn strong wages by learning to operate drones and GPS-guided tractors, it overhauled its agriculture curriculum and internship placement program to ensure that every student learned those skills.
The college also strengthened its early child care program by building a transfer pathway to a bachelor’s degree in elementary education, a move that will help fill teacher shortages in regional schools and provide students access to higher-wage jobs. The college also raised wages at its own child care center.
In the short term, these changes cost the college money, but in the long term, they will increase regional well-being and add value for students and employers.
2. Strengthen connections with community partners.
The most effective rural development hub leaders start by building trust. They listen to and learn from employers, educators and community-based organizations. That helps ensure that the solutions they devise truly strengthen the community. This requires demonstrating the flexibility and responsiveness needed to foster thriving partnerships that reflect their region’s unique history, culture and economy.
Georgia Highlands College offers an excellent example. Its community faced a shortage of health care workers, compromising community health and economic progress. So Georgia Highlands partnered with Atrium Health to expand talent development; it received funding from the company for nursing education, including for student scholarships and instructors. Graduates commit to working in local health care centers.
The college also secured funding from a regional foundation to support positions that connect high school students to the college and to programs that lead to living-wage jobs, including those in health care. Today, Georgia Highlands College is working together with K-12 schools, a local health care system and a foundation to help students succeed while addressing critical workforce and public health needs.
3. Build talent and leadership pipelines.
Rural colleges do more than solve specific community challenges; they activate the next generation of civic and community leaders. They play this role by investing in local capacity and youth leadership, building a sense of belonging, fostering confidence and offering connections to educational and career pathways close to home.
That has been a focus of Wallace State Community College in Alabama. Wallace State has aligned its programs to boost a regional economy that serves rural Appalachian communities, graduating well-prepared students ready to fill in-demand jobs in welding, health care, manufacturing and other sectors.
The college president, a first-generation college graduate and longtime resident, has partnered with local K-12 schools to show students how they could benefit from a college education. Elementary school students are invited to a “let’s pretend hospital” event at the college’s nursing facilities. Middle school students get STEM programming. And every ninth grader in the county receives a free workforce skills course that explains the connection between college programs and specific careers. Outreach and targeted messaging continue through high school.
Every region faces challenges that no single institution can resolve. By embodying the three lessons above, rural community colleges across the country can increase enrollments and build trust, ensuring not just the success of their students but also of their entire region.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
America’s future is not made in factories or innovation labs — it’s forged in classrooms. We can’t bring good jobs back to U.S. shores if we don’t first educate a workforce capable of doing them. The latest National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, known as the Nation’s Report Card, paints a grim picture, with test scores down since 2019 for eighth graders in science and 12th graders in math and reading.
The lowest-performing learners lost the most ground, leaving large percentages of students unable to perform the strong academic work required for postsecondary life. Only about 1 in 5 high school seniors scored at the NAEP Proficient level in math. That puts them at a terrible disadvantage since STEM positions make up a growing percentage of the workforce. Nearly half were working below even the NAEP Basic level, meaning they likely don’t know how to use percentages to solve real-world problems.
This isn’t the first bad report card we’ve seen since the pandemic upended learning five years ago, but progress in American education has generally been stalled for at least a decade. Leaders at every level need to stop using the pandemic as an excuse and start looking for solutions. There have been times in the past when Republicans and Democrats have come together around education. While that may be difficult to do today, it’s needed more than ever.
We need new approaches, more resources and all hands on deck to help students develop the knowledge and skills to thrive in an increasingly complicated world. The teens who took the 12th grade tests are now out of school. They’re facing a workforce disrupted by AI and demanding more from them — not less. Even young people who opt not to go to college, such as those looking to work in manufacturing, for example, need more advanced STEM and literacy skills than in the past.
There are some areas of educational progress around the country we can learn from. For example, Indiana is remaking the American high school experience to personalize it and connect it to the world of work, while Rhode Island is reinvigorating career and technical education to embed it with more rigor and ensure it provides an on-ramp to an array of postsecondary options, including college.
We can also expand on the reforms that are taking root in elementary education. An emphasis on the research behind teaching children to read, sometimes referred to as the science of reading, is effective. And states like Mississippi and Louisiana, leaders in this movement, have seen strong literacy gains. We can apply that kind of evidence-based approach across K-12 subjects and grades.
It’s also vital to listen to what students are saying. Fortunately, the Nation’s Report Card can help with this.
Survey data accompanying the eighth grade science assessment suggests that inquiry-based learning is in decline. Fewer students say they’re spending time on things like designing experiments to answer research questions. That kind of instruction helps students build science knowledge and develop key skills like the ability to think critically and to collaborate with peers, exactly the kind of skills that AI can’t replace.
The best instruction has a purpose for learning, explores real-world problems and makes connections to work. Most states have passed science standards that promote this kind of instruction, but more resources are needed to get aligned materials into schools and provide teachers with the training to use them effectively.
Getting kids out of the classroom helps too. I invited elementary school students to my farm in western Massachusetts a few years ago and vividly recall a fourth grader’s aha moment, finally understanding decimals when collecting 2.25 inches of rain in a vial. It was a terrific example of how interdisciplinary science is and how powerful it is in experiential learning settings.
It’s true that science resources, such as lab materials, can be expensive; however, schools can tap into community partners and business leaders for assistance. In Massachusetts, for example, General Electric has helped bring mobile technology labs into schools.
One thing I am grateful for, even amid all this bad education news, is the high-quality data shining a light on the problems we’re facing. There are too many voices today calling for a rollback of testing. That’s a mistake. Obtaining meaningful data, such as that found on the Nation’s Report Card, is crucial. Of course, what we do with it matters even more.
It has been 42 years since American leaders from across political parties and sectors came together to bring attention to “A Nation at Risk,” a landmark report that spurred significant education reforms. And it’s been 36 years since 49 governors came together and defined the state role in K-12 schooling.
After these milestones, the nation saw sustained progress on NAEP. We need that same leadership now.
Republican Jane Swift is a former governor from Massachusetts who serves on theNational Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the Nation’s Report Card. She is also the CEO ofEducation at Work, a nonprofit that connects college students with work-based learning opportunities.
This story about NAEP scores was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
