Lumina Foundation is working to increase the share of adults in the U.S. labor force with college degrees or other credentials of value leading to economic prosperity.
Education should remain accessible, valuable, and align with today’s workforce needs, says Lumina Foundation's Jamie Merisotis.
On this podcast, Merisotis discusses some of the challenges that still exist for Americans trying to obtain credentials of value, plus Lumina's new national goal to expand and elevate higher education and workforce training by 2040 and what it will take to get there.
Tribal college leaders across the country are scrambling to make contingency plans as the Trump administration continues to review, freeze, and slash federal grants in a massive effort to downsize government and roll back federal programs they perceive as related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Some schools have already seen grants disappear, while others are preparing just in case. Meanwhile, staff cuts to the Bureau of Indian Education and the U.S. Department of Education—not to mention plans to dismantle the department—are exacerbating fears and uncertainty on campuses.
Only 19 percent of students at Howard University are Black men. Howard is not unique. The number of Black men attending four-year colleges has plummeted across the board. And nowhere is this deficit more pronounced than at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Black men account for 26 percent of the students at HBCUs, down from an already low 38 percent in 1976. There are now about as many non-Black students attending HBCUs as there are Black men.
The decline has profound implications for economic mobility, family formation, and wealth generation.
In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, grinding life to a halt and severely disrupting instruction across higher education. Colleges and universities everywhere are still feeling the effects of the virus five years later.
In this interview, higher education experts look back at the changes made and how the pandemic continues to shape the sector today.
In a significant shift for higher education access, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker announced his support for new legislation that would allow the state’s community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees in high-demand fields. The move aligns Illinois with a growing national trend that has seen dramatic expansion in baccalaureate programs at community colleges across the country.
A recent survey revealed that 75 percent of students at Illinois community colleges would pursue a bachelor’s degree if they could complete it at their current institution—a statistic that demonstrates significant untapped potential in the state’s third-largest community college system, which serves 600,000 residents annually.
The start of spring semester is a hopeful time on college campuses. Students fill the quads and walkways as music plays and frisbees fly. Every year in the United States, almost 20 million people go to college, representing every race, ethnicity, and social class. This is college in America—or it has been for a long time.
Since January, the Trump administration has caused chaos in higher education, prompting professors and administrators to raise alarms that a cornerstone of American life could be destroyed.
