Colleges should resist viewing Workforce Pell—which launches on Wednesday—as a policy designed exclusively for vocational schools and short-term training, says Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education. “I see all of our institutions as workforce institutions, whether you’re a research institution or a community college,” he says on The University Business Podcast. “It’s just for a different segment of the workforce.” Rather than treating workforce readiness as a separate function, Kentucky encourages colleges to make employment and economic advancement the cornerstones of students success. Dr. Thompson credits this approach with boosting the state’s enrollment and college completion rates. “We know we higher education is valuable, but one of the main reasons is because we are a direct connector to a strong economy,” Thompson says. “We cannot be afraid to embrace that.”
