Careers like the skilled trades and shipbuilding were listed in both grant competitions as high-demand fields students could pursue through work-based learning.
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Grant competitions for two TRIO programs include new priorities related to workforce development pathways, despite the programs’ statutory requirements to help first-generation learners access higher education. The shift, which comes after TRIO—a group of federal college-access programs—moved to the Department of Labor, have rung alarm bells for advocates.
The Trump administration also is planning to reduce how many grants it awards via TRIO, according to the first two competitions. More than 800,000 students benefit from the seven TRIO programs on an annual basis.
Kimberly Jones, the president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, an advocacy organization for TRIO programs, told Inside Higher Ed that the administration is rerouting programs and funds aimed at helping students access higher education toward career and technical education instead.
“We have no opposition to those as viable options for students,” said Jones. “Our concern is that there are many other routes to workforce training programs through [the Labor and Education Departments], and we’re very troubled and disturbed that the administration would take one of the few national efforts to steer that population toward college and attempt to turn it into workforce training.”
It’s the latest in the Trump administration’s attacks on TRIO; last year the administration pulled grant funding for over 100 programs, citing what the administration saw as references to DEI in their grant applications as justification. The administration’s 2026–27 budget proposal, released Friday, defunds TRIO entirely, though Congress is unlikely to grant that request.
The grant competitions that include the new priorities are for Educational Opportunity Centers and Talent Search. In the call for Talent Search proposals, the department wrote that recipients “should explore talent marketplaces, learning and employment records, and other mechanisms that present apprenticeships, career and technical education, and integration with the workforce system as equally viable and often faster routes to economic mobility as traditional college programs.”
It also listed expanding access to apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships as one of the competition’s priorities, highlighting skilled trades, health care, manufacturing, information technology, artificial intelligence and shipbuilding as high-demand career options that can come from work-based learning.
Historically, Talent Search has worked with students as young as sixth grade and has focused on exposing students to the idea of going to college, helping with SAT prep, walking participants through scholarship and financial aid options, and more. Jones said shifting that program toward workforce development, rather than traditional higher education, is “an absolute departure from the mission and focus and vision that Congress intended for the TRIO program.”
Educational Opportunity Centers, meanwhile, are intended to help adults get back into education, such as providing assistance completing their GED or re-entering college. The department requested proposals that “go beyond traditional college enrollment to open doors to a full spectrum of high-quality postsecondary options” and included the same list of high-demand careers as the Talent Search competition.
Jones said the Educational Opportunity Centers competition’s emphasis on workforce development wasn’t as troubling because of the program’s focus on adult learners. Still, she noted, the ultimate goal of TRIO is to help students access four-year degrees.
The call for proposals also indicates that the number of EOC programs would drop from 160 to just 55, while the number of Talent Search programs would be slashed in half.
COE warned that these decreases, combined with the new workforce development priorities, could lead to a lack of critical services for hundreds of thousands of students, particularly those in rural and other underserved areas.
“This redirection, combined with a drastic reduction in grant funding, would limit access to services nationwide, particularly for communities already facing barriers to higher education,” the organization wrote in a news release last month, adding that the Talent Search “proposal risks destabilizing existing programs by concentrating funding into fewer, larger awards and prioritizing state-level entities, potentially displacing long-standing community-based and institutional providers.”
COE called on Congress to implore ED to rescind these two calls for proposals.
In a statement to Inside Higher Ed, Education Department spokesperson Ellen Keast pushed back against COE’s characterization of the grant competitions.
“The purpose of higher education is to improve the lives of Americans and ensure they are well-equipped to enter in-demand, high-wage careers—regardless of which educational pathway they choose. It’s a shame that an advocacy group claiming to promote opportunity would instead stand as a barrier to upward mobility and student success,” she wrote (emphasis hers). “The competition will proceed as outlined in the Departments’ notice.”
