Over the past year, the Administration has repeatedly expressed interest in addressing the country’s infrastructure needs. Earlier today, a full proposal to accomplish the Administration’s goals was finally released. According to the memo accompanying the framework, it is designed to “stimulate at least $1.5 trillion in new investment over the next 10 years, shorten the process for approving projects to 2 years or less, address unmet rural infrastructure needs, empower State and local authorities, and train the American workforce of the future.”
However, the framework only calls for $200 billion in federal spending over 10 years, with the largest portion of the proposal built around an incentive grant program to spur state and local investments. While there is much discussion on the merits of such incentives and other elements of the plan, the portion of most interest to the CTE community is the workforce development component.
Unfortunately, no funding was designated for this portion of the plan. Instead, four proposals are included under “Part 4—Workforce Development”:
- Expand Pell Grant Eligibility to High-Quality, Short-Term Programs
This section focuses on “expanding Pell Grant eligibility to high-quality, short-term programs would allow individuals to use Pell Grants to pay for short-term programs that lead to a credential or certification in an in-demand field.” This idea already has bipartisan support through the JOBS Act (which ACTE has endorsed) and a version of it was included in the House Higher Education Act reauthorization bill.
- Reform Career and Technical Education
This section presents, for the first time, some of the Trump Administration’s ideas for the reauthorization of Perkins. It includes criticisms of high school CTE in particular, noting Perkins as “in dire need of reform” and the activities it funds as “unlikely to improve student outcomes” and “often not aligned to local workforce needs.” We’ll be going into more detail in a future blog post on the reauthorization specifics, but in general, they propose activities already allowed under current law or emphasized in the House bill. - Strengthen Ties to the Workforce for College Students
This section focuses on revamping the federal work-study program, including its funding formula, to better distribute funds to schools serving low-income students, and to focus more on funding career pathway-related programs. Like the Pell Grant proposals, similar reforms have already been included in the House Higher Education Act reauthorization bill. - Reform Licensing Requirements for Individuals Seeking a Job on an Infrastructure Project
This section focuses on changing federal award rules to require that States accepting federal funds for infrastructure projects accept workers with out-of-state licenses to work on those projects.
While the HEA proposals mentioned above have broad, bipartisan support, and a reauthorized Perkins will help to address the economy’s broader skills needs (despite some concerns about the specifics here), none of these proposals actually address the workforce development needs that are specific to infrastructure development. Last year, the Senate CTE Caucus held a briefing to talk about the links between CTE and infrastructure, and we hope to continue to work with Congress to strengthen any infrastructure legislation’s focus on specific workforce development needs.
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