Democrats and Republicans are working together to help poor people get training for better jobs. That might seem hard to believe these days, but it’s true.

The Jobs Act, introduced by Senator Tim Kaine, Democrat of Virginia, and Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, attracted 12 bipartisan co-sponsors, including three Democrats who are running for president. Similar legislation was introduced in the House. It could very well become law.

Unfortunately, a raft of research suggests this well-meaning bill may actually hurt the students it is designed to help.

Currently, low-income students can use Pell grants to pay for bachelor’s degrees, associate’s degrees and shorter certificate programs that last at least 15 weeks. The Jobs Act would drop the minimum to eight weeks for any “job training program” offered by an accredited college. Eligible students would receive up to about $3,000 — half a Pell grant — to pay tuition.

The intent is to modernize the college financial aid system to help students get jobs quickly. “We’ve perpetrated a myth that post-high school has to be college,” Mr. Kaine, the son of an iron worker and welder, said at a Senate Education Committee hearing. “There are all kinds of career and technical programs where there is significant need in the work force.”

Mr. Kaine and Mr. Portman promised they would allow the abridged Pell grants to support only “high-quality and rigorous” programs. But the bill doesn’t have an effective mechanism for ensuring quality. As written, it could touch off a new wave of exploitation by the same for-profit colleges that have already wasted billions of taxpayer dollars and left some vulnerable students with mountains of debt.

When it comes to quality, the existing Pell grant system largely lets colleges police themselves. There is no accountability for whether students get jobs after they graduate or how much they earn. That’s less of a problem for bachelor’s degree programs because there is much evidence on the long-term economic benefit of a B.A., especially for low-income students. Even much-maligned liberal arts degrees tend to pay off in the end.

Short-term training programs have only one purpose. If they don’t lead to better jobs and wages, they have failed. And study after study finds that too many such programs are, in fact, failing.

The Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce found that while certificate programs increase earnings on average, “there are many certificates — especially in fields of study with high concentrations of women — that do not confer a substantial wage premium over a high school degree.”

Who offers these failing programs? Often, for-profit colleges that enroll large numbers of students. An analysis from the left-leaning Center for American Progress found that “of the 15 certificate programs with the most graduates, 10 have typical earnings of $18,000 or less” for students two to four years after they leave school. “This includes the two largest program types — medical assisting and cosmetology — which have typical earnings of $15,309 and $12,272, respectively.”

In many states, cosmetology is dominated by for-profit schools. The same is true for medical assisting (with duties like checking vital signs and scheduling appointments). And these dismal results are for programs that last at least 15 weeks. Smaller programs could be even less effective.

In addition to shortchanging women, the limitations of short-term certificates are also stratified by race. Georgetown researchers found that one in six African-Americans report their highest level of education as a certificate, compared with one in nine among Hispanic, Asian, and white Americans. Yet African-Americans get the smallest earnings boost for their short-term credentials.

Nothing in the Jobs Act would change these dynamics. The bill says job training programs must “meet the hiring requirements of potential employers.” But it allows individual colleges, including for-profits, to decide whether their own programs qualify. That laissez-faire approach to regulation recently led to widespread fraud and abuse, saddling hundreds of thousands of students with bad loans.

In response, the Obama administration cracked down on the for-profit industry. The Trump administration is in the process of dismantling the Obama rules.

Columbia University researchers have found that the positive benefits of short-term certificates “may fade out within a few years post-college.” The benefits of longer-term credentials, by contrast, persist.

Yet only about one in four students whose first credential is a short-term certificate go on to earn an associate’s or bachelor’s degree within six years. For those 24 and over, it’s closer to one in five.

There are other ways to lift workers who need better jobs. Services like career advising and job search assistance have been shown to help. On-the-job learning can also be effective. But the Jobs Act doesn’t fund such assistance, because the Pell grant program wasn’t designed to fund job training. Instead, the bill leaves students at the mercy of a higher education market that routinely fails them. The students buy training that, especially for women and students of color, often doesn’t work.

All of these issues are likely to play out on a larger stage as Democrats vying for the presidency propose large new federal investments in higher learning, and Congress begins the once-a-decade task of reauthorizing the federal Higher Education Act.

It’s appealing to think that for just $3,000, and just eight weeks, students could get enough training to begin better careers. That’s probably why so many politicians from both sides of the aisle have signed onto the Jobs Act. But short training programs of wildly uneven quality are already contributing to a growing wealth gap along race and gender lines. Making them even shorter could make that disparity even worse.

Kevin Carey directs the education policy program at New America. You can follow him on Twitter at @kevincarey1.

Source: Read Full Article