Advocates for the JOBS Act are on the Hill this week, hoping to add to its already impressive list of sponsors from both sides of the aisle. The bill would amend the Higher Education Act to support job training programs for adults who lack the skills or credentials they need to get a foothold in today’s labor market. It’s heartening to see bipartisan support for job training, which is woefully underfunded in the United States even as the skill requirements of jobs creep up and employers struggle to fill positions.
The JOBS Act is proving popular among lawmakers. It aims to help Americans without college degrees move into good jobs, and to do so without adding any new spending. But that’s also where this well-intentioned bill gets into trouble, because the funding source it seeks to leverage — the Pell grant program — was never designed to support short-term job training and lacks the critical quality controls and consumer protections necessary to ensure that these programs actually lead to good jobs.
The above excerpt was originally published in The Hill.
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