States are starting to publish lists of programs they consider potentially eligible for Workforce Pell. The federal program has three accountability bars: at least 70 percent completion, at least 70 percent job placement, and earnings above 150 percent of the federal poverty line ($23,475 in 2025). North Carolina is the first state to publish a list with its own outcomes data attached. Of the 87 course-credential combinations on that list, only 23 provably clear all three bars. Forty-two provably fail at least one. Twenty-two cannot be evaluated because the data is suppressed.
This page tracks how many programs each state publishes, and how many of those programs the published data shows would actually pass.
All three apply during the 2026-2029 transitional accountability window. Stricter occupation-match standards begin AY 2029-30 and the full value-added earnings test phases in AY 2030-31.
The 70 percent job placement bar is the binding constraint, by a wide margin. Earnings is the least common failure point.
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| Code | Course | Credential | Completion | Job Placement | Earnings | Verdict |
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Source. The NC data comes from the North Carolina Community College System's "Some NCCCS WCE Course and Credential Combinations Potentially Eligible for Workforce Pell" (March 9, 2026 update). The list is constructed from NCCCS Workforce Continuing Education (WCE) courses with credentials that have actually run within the 150-599 hour, 8 to less than 15 week Workforce Pell time window. Outcomes are NC's own 2023-24 figures.
The three bars. Source: Workforce Pell statute (OBBBA Section 83002) and the U.S. Department of Education's final rule published in the Federal Register on May 19, 2026 (effective July 20, 2026; July 1 for eligible workforce programs). The transitional standard requires 70 percent completion, 70 percent job placement within 180 days, and median earnings above 150 percent of the federal poverty level. Stricter occupation-match standards apply beginning AY 2029-30.
How NC measures job placement. Federal rule asks for the share of completers employed within 180 days. NC measures this by checking how many graduates appear in state Unemployment Insurance (UI) wage records (NC's internal label is "wage match rate"). UI records catch most W-2 employment in the state but miss self-employed workers, federal employees, active-duty military, and anyone who took a job in another state. NC's own footnote: "Wage Match Rate is a proxy for Job Placement Rate. It could underestimate job placement, especially for occupations with high rates of self-employment, border-state employment, or federal employment. Wage match rates/median earnings could also look lower for courses that are frequently offered in prisons." This is structurally the same issue identified in the skilled trades analysis: state UI records miss specific kinds of work, so the published numbers are not the true job-placement numbers.
What "fail" means here. A program is classified as a Fail if NC's published outcomes data shows at least one of the three metrics below the threshold. That is not a determination that the program is low quality. It is a determination that, on NC's own data and the rule's own thresholds, the program would not currently clear the bar. A program could be in this bucket because of a real outcomes issue or because the wage-match measurement misses real employment.
What "suppressed" means here. NC's data masks one or more metrics with an asterisk when "there wasn't enough data to be reliable/offer a meaningful statistic." A program in this bucket has not been measured rather than measured-and-failed. The federal rule requires at least 50 completers within four years before the value-added test is computed; programs below that threshold are not assessed at all. The value-added analysis goes deeper on this scale problem.
Aggregation. The NC list is course-credential combinations (one course code can map to multiple credentials, each row counted separately). A course with five associated credentials produces five rows. This matches NC's own counting.
Related: State Readiness Tracker · Value-Added Earnings Test · AI Exposure Index · Limits of PSEO