Kai Nip

This week, Congress is voting on the Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act, a piece of legislation aiming to expand short-term workforce training. If the bill becomes law, graduate and undergraduate students at wealthy universities across the country will lose access to federal student loans to fund the new program.

The bill is aimed to provide $160 million worth of grants to help students pay for workforce training programs that align with the “requirements of high-skill, high-wage, or in-demand industry sectors or occupations,” according to a report by the House of Representatives.

“The proposed Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act will have a major and immediate impact on Yale students,” Brittaney Key, the School of the Environment’s senator in the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, wrote to the News. “It forces current students into a financially vulnerable position by cutting off their access to federal loans that many use to afford housing, childcare, food, and other essential but indirect educational expenses.”

The report states that the bill “prohibits an applicable educational institution, that is subject to an excise tax on investment income of private institutions, from awarding a Federal Direct Stafford Loan, a Federal Direct Unsubsidized Stafford loan, or a Federal Direct Plus Loan to any eligible student” to fund the workforce grants.

With an endowment that exceeds $40 billion, Yale will be among the many schools affected by the Workforce Pell Act. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill’s funding will prohibit students at 35 institutions from accessing federal loans, including those studying at Harvard, Princeton and Columbia.

The CBO also reported that in 2022, students at these 35 institutions have applied for $1.4 billion worth of federal student loans, with about 80 percent of it going to graduate students.

“Ultimately, we would like to get this legislation changed so that they get a different funding,” Chrishan Fernando, the president of the Graduate and Professional Student Senate, told the News. “We do not want to kill the bill. We agree with what is in it but we want to make sure that it does not go forward with the current funding offset because that would really be detrimental to a lot of graduate and professional students, to an extent undergraduate students as well.”

The senate wrote a community letter for students to sign to address the issue.

Alex Rich, GPSS Advocacy Committee Co-chair, wrote to the News that the letter was signed by 361 graduate and professional students as well as 9 graduate and professional student government groups across 14 institutions that would be affected by the bill.

“The goal of this multi-institutional community letter is for Congress to recognize these impacts and to find a different funding offset,” Key wrote to the News. “We are continuing to work together with other affected institutions and to utilize channels available to us to raise awareness and advocate for reform of this bill.”

The letter states that denying federal loans to students at “elite institutions” will put these schools more out of reach for low and middle-class students and their families.

It also says that without federal loans, students will have to face an “uncertain landscape” for acquiring student loans and rely on private and institutional loans instead.

“We sent the letter on Wednesday morning to Chairwoman Foxx and Ranking Member Scott as well as all members of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce,” Rich said. 

Azita Emami, Megan Ranney and Jessica Illuzzi — the dean of the School of Nursing, dean of the School of Public Health and deputy dean for education at the School of Medicine respectively —  also addressed their concerns about the bill in an article in the Hartford Courant. 

They explained that the loss of access to federal student loans will present a serious obstacle specifically for students aspiring to healthcare careers, which will make it harder to tackle the shortage of healthcare professionals across the country to meet the demand for healthcare.

“Look up who your representative is, and make sure that you call them and then tell them about this bill,” Fernando told the News. “Tell them that it is going to affect you or people that you know and that you want them to change the funding offset … I think it is especially powerful if it is coming from students who will be directly affected by it or if they know somebody directly affected by it.”

The Bipartisan Workforce Pell Act was proposed by the Committee on Education and the Workforce on Dec. 22, 2023.