New Jersey Workforce Pell

Where New Jersey stands on Workforce Pell

Status

Live: an operational approval process underway, an open application window, a pilot cohort accepting programs, or an eligible-program list being finalized and submitted to ED (the Record’s definition).

Phase

Four Programs at Governor-Recommendation Stage

Lead agency

NJ Office of the Secretary of Higher Education (OSHE) and NJ Department of Labor & Workforce Development

Current holdup

ED

The NJDOL approved-programs page now lists four programs at the Governor-recommendation stage: Rowan College of South Jersey-Gloucester's Patient Care Tech, Ocean County College's Phlebotomy Technician, and AIMS Education's Electrocardiography/Phlebotomy Technician and Medical Billing and Coding Specialist (the fourth row appeared between the October 22 archive capture and October 27); the page states ED conducts its own final review and transmits approval directly to providers, no federal approval is recorded for any, and the table carries no dates

State portal

nj.gov

What the record documents

OSHE and NJDOL ran a program-determination process as joint leads: institutions submitted program and student data by a May 1 deadline so the state could build its eligible-program list, which the governor was to submit to the U.S. Department of Education by July 1, 2026. As of July 31 no public confirmation of the submission or a published program list has been posted, and OSHE's latest broadcasts (July 10) do not mention it. The State Employment and Training Commission, the state workforce board, received an overview of the program's launch year at its June 17 meeting (announced in OSHE's June 10 broadcast, still the latest Workforce Pell broadcast before September). The submission question resolved on September 2, 2026: an OSHE broadcast announced that NJDOL, with OSHE and the interagency working group, launched a public Workforce Pell website, and the site provides the first public confirmation and size of the state's ED submission: "During the pilot year (July 2026 to June 2027), access to eligible programs will be limited. The State of New Jersey has recommended one program to the US Department of Education for approval, a patient care technician program offered by Rowan College of South Jersey-Gloucester. The program is expected to expand in the coming years." The site posts a Policies and Procedures Handbook and a Data Collection Memo; its approved-programs page lists the Rowan program under a "Governor recommendation" column and states that "USED conducts its own final review and transmits approval directly to the providers," and its provider page answers the next-cycle question with "The current Workforce Pell pilot year review cycle in New Jersey is closed," directing institutions to watch the site for future submission cycles. New Jersey's one-program pilot submission is the narrowest first-year posture among live states that have disclosed a count. By October 27, 2026 the approved-programs table had grown to four Governor-recommended rows (four data rows counted from the page table), adding AIMS Education's Medical Billing and Coding Specialist; no federal approval is recorded. Source, NJDOL site

Verified against the sources on November 6, 2026.

Eligible occupations in New Jersey

The State Approval Comparison, which compares every published state eligible-occupation framework (27 so far), does not include a New Jersey list as of November 6, 2026.

Approved Workforce Pell programs in New Jersey

No New Jersey program appears in the Record’s approved-programs table (U.S. Department of Education announcements and state rosters of federally approved programs) as of November 5, 2026.

Sources

Every primary source the record cites for New Jersey, last checked November 6, 2026.

• State Workforce Pell portal (nj.gov)
• approved-programs page (nj.gov)
• Source (www.nj.gov)