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.
Last year, the financial aid world was thrown into chaos after a newly overhauled Free Application for Federal Student Aid launched with glaring technical errors and user issues.
Now, college-access advocates and financial aid officers are worried about a repeat scenario. Specifically, they fear that deep cuts at the Office of Federal Student Aid, which oversees the FAFSA, could undermine its capacity to fix technical issues as they arise, field questions from families still wary from last year’s botched rollout, and manage the third-party contractors responsible for much of the form’s functionality.
Republican lawmakers recently cut millions of dollars in funding for Utah’s eight public universities. To get it back, universities will have to overhaul their academic programs by considering eliminations of majors, jobs, and more.
While lawmakers across the country have set conditions for colleges to receive money before—often via performance-based funding, which makes part of campus budgets contingent on student outcomes rather than enrollment—the use of academic program review as leverage is a new strategy.
Southern Illinois University was the only four-year college within reach when Molly Parker enrolled there in the fall of 2000—both in miles and cost. The experience set her on the path to the person she would become. It is still a place of opportunity, but it is now more fragile—a fraction of its former size, grappling with relentless enrollment and budget concerns.
Schools like SIU, located in a region that overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump, may not be the primary targets of his threatened funding cuts, but they—along with the communities they serve—stand to lose the most.
Over the past decades, the country has made significant progress in expanding access to college, creating more opportunities for veterans, women, Black students and other students of color, people from low-income households, and others.
But to meet the demands of today’s economy, education and training after high school must deliver greater value. This will take a real redesign of higher education to meaningfully address concerns and create a system that works better for everyone, writes Lumina Foundation's Jamie Merisotis in his latest column for Forbes.
European universities are stepping in to save American researchers fleeing drastic cuts to jobs and programs by the Trump administration, as well as perceived attacks on whole fields of research.
At stake are not just individual jobs, but the concept of free scientific inquiry, university presidents say. They are also rushing to fill huge holes in collective research caused by the cuts, particularly in areas targeted by President Trump, including studies of climate change, public health, environmental science, gender, and diversity.
The University of California is threading a delicate needle as it navigates the Trump administration’s intensifying scrutiny of how universities operate.
On one front, UC leaders are fighting President Donald Trump’s proposed cuts to campus research funding by joining lawsuits against the administration. On other matters, the university has taken a more muted approach, posting online missives in support of students in the country without legal authorization but seemingly unwilling to rankle a White House that is targeting campus policies and practices.
