State Policy Digest | November 2025

userNovember 24, 20256 Mins read

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Workforce Pell is Here, and State Higher Education Executive Officers Are Key in Ensuring it is Implemented Effectively

As part of the budget reconciliation legislation known as H.R. 1 or the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBB), Congress created Workforce Pell Grants, which expand access to Pell Grant funds for students enrolled in programs that are shorter than the previous minimum required length.

TICAS’ model state legislation includes a structure for institutions to gain approval for Workforce Pell Grant funds and guardrails to protect students from needlessly expensive programs, unaccredited bad actors, and other potential problems that Congress did not solve. Because there are examples of problematic behavior and potential illegal conduct committed by some short-term program providers, any state law should bolster student protections and prevent bad actors and subpar programs from accessing this significant expansion of federal aid.

Workforce Pell offers an opportunity for states to continue to break down the silos between their postsecondary and workforce sectors. Section 4 of our model state legislation calls for a Workforce Pell Advisory Board. The broad array of potential advisory board members is meant to enable states to assemble an advisory group that is appropriate to your state’s higher education and workforce governance systems. The main idea is to have state higher education authorizers, state financial aid officials, and student and borrower protection experts sitting alongside their workforce development counterparts. To fully and successfully implement Workforce Pell, state boards may need to consider new members and subcommittees. Read more about the types of activities that advisory board members could engage in as well as the other sections of the model legislation in our blog.

State higher education executive officers (SHEEOs) need a seat at the Workforce Pell table due to their various roles in:

Protecting students and borrowers;
Authorizing institutions to operate in their states;
Statewide data collection and reporting; and
Disbursing, overseeing, creating, and updating financial aid programs and policies.

TICAS thanks all the state and system leaders who provided feedback on our model legislation. We will be updating the model legislation regularly and welcome additional feedback.

The latest news from our student-centered policy and advocacy teams in Sacramento, Lansing, and Albany

California

Governor Newsom signed the 2025-26 enacted California state budget into law on June 27, 2025.

Key budget highlights include:

$20 million in emergency grants for community college students;
$15 million for Dreamer Resource Liaisons;
$5.1 million for community-based financial aid outreach and support; and
$5.3 million for a statewide campaign on financial aid.

Read more about which TICAS priorities were included in the final budget.

Michigan

The 2025–26 budget was signed by Governor Whitmer on October 7. It includes new money for roads, an increase in per-pupil funding for K-12 schools, continuation of the popular free school meals program, and it largely sustains funding for higher education.

Specifically, higher education related items in the budget include:

$10 million for FAFSA completion programming;
Nearly $135 million in early postsecondary programming and test incentives (including career technical education (CTE), dual enrollment, early/middle colleges, AP, IB, and CLEP);
Over $580 million in state financial aid programs for recent high school graduates, adults over the age of 25, students who had been on Medicaid, and individuals seeking to become educators, among other groups;
Over $650 million for the Department of Lifelong Education, Advancement, and Potential, including funding for increased capacity for the student grants portal and team and increasing awareness of postsecondary opportunities among men; and
$1 million for student success and wraparound supports.

Read more in our 2025-26 MI Budget Fact Sheet.

New York

New York State is in the first year of its two-year legislative cycle. The 2025 legislative session made incremental but meaningful progress in ensuring that New York’s higher education system becomes more equitable and addresses the needs of today’s students. Key themes included improving access for adult learners, fortifying support for college completion programs, and increasing transparency.

Our legislative session recap includes higher education developments in areas spanning affordability, college completion, transparency, and data collection, including:

The creation of the New York State Opportunity Promise Scholarship;
Dedicated funding for both SUNY and CUNY for their Advancing Success in Associate Programs (ASAP) and Advancing Completion through Engagement (ACE) college completion student support programs;
A requirement that financial aid award letters include the net costs of college, defined as the estimate of the costs of attendance after financial grant aid, and options for loans that require repayment; and
Revised loan level reporting for private student loan servicers and private nonprofit postsecondary providers of higher education that service student loans.

Read more about other developments in our blog and check out our fact sheet to find out which bills only made it out of one house.

TICAS created a federal higher education tracker, Breaking F(Ed), as a resource where we will share breaking news, in-depth analyses, and tools for grassroots advocacy as we work to ensure federal policymakers are accountable for delivering on the promises they made to students, borrowers, and families across the country.

Webinar: Federal Shifts, State Impact: What the Reconciliation Bill Means for Higher Ed & How States Can Respond

Late October, TICAS hosted a webinar in collaboration with The Century Foundation and The Education Trust. We provided an overview on recent federal policy changes impacting college affordability, student support, and accountability; broke down key provisions from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act;” shared insights from the Negotiated Rulemaking process to implement those changes; and highlighted how states can respond through legislation and other actions. Learn more by accessing the webinar slides.

Negotiated Rulemaking

This fall, the U.S. Department of Education (ED) convened two work periods of the Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) committee to begin negotiated rulemaking (“neg reg”), a process ED uses to review, discuss, and hopefully reach consensus on proposed regulatory changes. These meetings focused on implementing the federal student loan borrowing and repayment provisions included in the recently enacted budget reconciliation law.

The committee discussed topics including changing fixed and income-based student loan repayment plans, phasing out previous income-driven repayment plans, setting caps on student loan borrowing, and revising policies on loan rehabilitation, deferment, and forbearance. Our neg reg recap blogs from the first and second work periods break down the primary areas of discussion among negotiators and ED and recap the arguments made by negotiators, the Department’s position, and what comes next.

ED will also be convening a separate rulemaking panel, the Accountability in Higher Education and Access through Demand-driven Workforce Pell (AHEAD) committee, which will meet in December 2025 and January 2026.