How a Living Expense Loan Increases Access to Workforce Training and Improves Graduation Rates

Sector-based workforce training programs have emerged as one of the most promising strategies for helping workers move into higher-paying careers. Rigorous evaluations show that participants in sectoral programs increase their earnings by 11 to 40 percent after completing training¹. By aligning training with employer demand in industries like healthcare, IT, and advanced manufacturing, these programs help learners build skills that translate directly into quality jobs. 

But for many learners, enrolling in these programs requires a difficult financial leap. Even when tuition is covered, participants often face months of reduced or lost income while completing training, all while still paying for transportation, childcare, and other living expenses. This challenge is especially acute for workers with limited savings — nearly half of Americans report they would struggle to cover a $400 emergency expense².

For participants already living paycheck to paycheck, gaining new skills is only half the battle; staying financially afloat long enough to complete the program is the other. As a result, workforce practitioners and policymakers increasingly recognize that financial supports — whether stipends, loans, or other forms of assistance — can play a critical role in helping learners persist through training and successfully transition into new careers. 

Per Scholas is a no-cost workforce training program focused on preparing adults for careers in technology. In 2023, Per Scholas launched a partnership with Social Finance and Ascent to provide a zero-interest loan of $3,000 to approved learners to cover living expenses while enrolled in its IT Support Training program, which is typically between 13 and 15 weeks. The IT Support Training program prepares learners with little to no previous experience in technology for entry-level IT support roles and for industry certifications such as CompTIA A+ and Google IT Support Professional Certificate.  

By reducing financial barriers for learners, Per Scholas seeks to use the zero-interest living expense loan to make its program available to those who otherwise might not be able to enroll and to help them persist through the program. The loan is also outcomes-based — learners have no repayment obligations if they earn less than $40,000 per year after the program. 

To support Per Scholas’s effort and commitment to data-driven monitoring and evaluation efforts, Social Finance conducted several analyses to examine the link between the loan and learner outcomes. Specifically, we were interested in two key questions: 

1. Did the loan increase enrollment in groups with historically lower enrollment rates? 
2. Did the loan increase persistence among enrolled learners, leading to higher graduation rates?  

Loan’s Effect on Enrollment  

To understand whether the loan changed who enrolls at Per Scholas, we compared cohort composition before and after its introduction using a difference-in-differences analysis that controlled for the location and time of enrollment. This approach compares before-after changes between groups, allowing the groups to differ at baseline while still accounting for broader time trends and differences across campuses. Our treatment group consisted of cohorts who were offered the loan, while the control group included cohorts enrolling in the same period without loan access. We found that access to the loan changed the composition of those who enrolled in Per Scholas’s training program.  

The association between access to the zero-interest loan and a decrease in learners who receive government assistance could be due to various factors. This may reflect concern among learners about losing access to public benefits, whether or not that would have been the case. It could also be a function of Per Scholas’s outreach approach: if more recent marketing and promotion strategies (e.g., Google Ads) when the loan was available disproportionately reached higher-income individuals, the applicant pool could skew towards those with higher incomes even if the loan itself expanded access among lower-income learners. 

There are a few different factors that could explain the loan’s association with a decrease in enrollment among caregivers. It is possible that caregivers missed loan information during the Admissions Overview at a higher rate than non-caregivers due to competing priorities. It could also be the case that broader increases in post-pandemic in-person caregiving demands during the 2022–2024 period reduced program participation regardless of financial support³. That said, we did find suggestive evidence that the loan helps some caregivers with access to in-person training specifically, relative to hybrid or remote formats. 

Loan’s Effect on Learner Outcomes 

To understand how the loan affected learner outcomes, we conducted a matched-comparison group analysis that compared learners who received the loan to similar learners who did not receive the loan.  

To isolate the effect of the loan on learner outcomes, we constructed a comparison group that is, on average, similar across observable characteristics including campus, learning environment/modality, race/ethnicity, gender, educational level, age, pre-program employment status, government assistance recipient status, and caregiver status.  

Per Scholas’s graduation rate of 86 percent for zero-interest loan learners is also impressively high when compared to alternatives. For the 2024-2025 academic year, the average graduation rate for community colleges is less than 38 percent⁴, and in an earlier study of several workforce development programs, the completion rate ranged from 40 percent to 52 percent⁵. The gap in graduation rates reveals an opportunity for programs like these to meaningfully increase graduation rates by offering similar living expense loans.

Setting Learners up for Success Down the Road 

The results from this analysis of the loan’s impact on learner outcomes emphasize the importance of living expense support in helping more learners access training opportunities and persist through the program to graduation.  

Our analysis also showed preliminary evidence that the loan, by increasing the graduation rate, may increase the likelihood of learners obtaining an exam-based certification, such as CompTIA A+, which can unlock more opportunities given the industry-wide recognition and preference for such certifications.  

Taken with the results from two rigorous studies of Per Scholas at its Bronx location showing significant wage gains for learners who were offered the opportunity to participate in Per Scholas, the loan shows great promise in strengthening employment outcomes for those who enroll with Per Scholas⁶.

What’s Next 

Encouraged by the positive effects on learner persistence and graduation rates, Per Scholas is actively exploring ways to improve and expand the zero-interest living expense loan. Per Scholas recently expanded offering the zero-interest loan to other trainings such as AI-Enabled Healthcare IT Technician, End User Desk Support, and IT Data Center Technician/Data Center Technician with AI Tools, while exploring expansion of loan eligibility to additional programs. At the same time, Per Scholas is also considering increasing the loan amount. For most learners, the current $3,000 offering covers only a portion of the living expense gap they face.

For policymakers and others invested in workforce development, Per Scholas has demonstrated that living expense support can be a meaningful lever in setting learners up for success. As the cost of living continues to rise, stakeholders interested in supporting workforce development trainings should consider whether adding or expanding living expense support is an effective way to produce even greater outcomes.

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