Lumina Foundation is committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025.
The month of January may very well set the stage for what becomes a year of reckoning for many colleges and universities, higher education observers say—one in which drastic changes will be required to make long-needed improvements.
This podcast delves into some of the issues likely to frame 2025, including infrastructure adjustments, reimagined degree programs, and what appears to be a new ultimatum for many struggling colleges: partner or perish.
Penn State leaders are reportedly keeping mum about whether they may close some of the university’s Commonwealth campuses that enroll a more racially diverse group of people, a greater percentage of Pennsylvania residents, and more first-generation college students than its flagship at University Park.
At a recent Penn State Faculty Senate meeting, university officials did not directly answer employees’ questions about possible campus closures. Instead, they emphasized the importance of student success, downward-trending university enrollments, and Penn State’s ongoing academic program review.
Dual enrollment is an appealing innovation that enjoys bipartisan support from an array of organizations that want it to succeed. Parents and policymakers like the idea that earning credits in high school not only encourages students to go on to college but also reduces the time and cost. Meanwhile, colleges embrace dual enrollment as a way to offset an unprecedented drop-off in traditional enrollment. And students are grabbing on to the opportunity.
Perhaps it’s because dual enrollment has been so widely embraced and has grown so quickly, however, that the practice is attracting new and more skeptical scrutiny.
Historically, people have held colleges up as pillars of free inquiry, constructive discourse, and debate. But in an increasingly polarized era, campuses have become microcosms of the political divisions plaguing the country.
College presidents and other higher education experts provided insight during the annual conference of the American Association of Colleges and Universities on how to guide an institution through challenging times while upholding an open culture of free speech.
Developmental education has come under scrutiny for delaying students’ academic attainment and overall degree progression. While the purpose of remedial courses is to prepare learners to succeed in more difficult courses, it can produce the opposite effect, discouraging learners from pursuing more advanced courses or pushing them to drop out.
A new analysis seems to confirm those conclusions, with researchers suggesting that placing students directly into college-level courses, rather than a more precise placement system, is key to learners’ success.
Too often, wealth and talent tend to accumulate in cities, perpetuating the misconception that technology startups can’t be successful in small towns and communities. The Center on Rural Innovation is working to change this narrative.
In this interview, CORI's Matt Dunne explains how his organization's on-the-ground work with rural community leaders is creating local, place-based ecosystems that provide pathways and opportunities to a more equitable and inclusive national economy.
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