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.
What is the state of higher education in America today? How do students and families view an education beyond high school? And what must policymakers and higher ed leaders do to make college truly affordable?
In this interview, Lumina Foundation's Courtney Brown answers these questions and offers insight about a recent Gallup survey on what Americans think about higher education, the importance of aligning short-term credentials and degrees with workforce demand, and how to create opportunities for everyone.
Oscar Mateo, an aspiring nurse, represents a paradox bedeviling today's U.S. nursing landscape.
There is enormous demand for nurses, as retirement or burnout pushes many from the field. Despite tens of thousands of students fighting to gain admission into nursing programs, schools can’t accommodate that demand for two major reasons: They can’t attract enough faculty to teach classes, and there is a dearth of the required hands-on training opportunities in hospitals and health care facilities.
For most people, medicines are a bottle of pills on a shelf—made by drug companies, stocked by pharmacies, and prescribed by doctors. But drugs that people take for serious illnesses—to prevent HIV, shrink tumors, and treat seizures—have years-long backstories that are often traced to basic science experiments in university laboratories.
The Trump administration’s new deal for higher ed is putting increasing pressure on the nine universities involved to reject the proposal.
Multiple major associations representing institutions and faculty have urged them not to sign it. California Governor Gavin Newsom has stated that the University of Southern California, along with any other university in his state that signs the deal, will "instantly" lose billions in state funding. Faculty groups at the University of Virginia, another institution presented with the compact, overwhelmingly urged university leaders to reject it.
Since 2005, the Kalamazoo Promise has provided free college tuition to students who attend Kalamazoo public schools from kindergarten through 12th grade. The effort serves as a lifeline in Kalamazoo, a city of 73,000 about two hours west of Detroit, where 38 percent of families lack enough income to cover basic household expenses.
Kalamazoo Promise is also a model for hundreds of other programs aimed at making college more affordable. In this interview, free-college advocates discuss the ongoing success of the Kalamazoo Promise and the growing need for more promise programs like it.
Conservative and liberal students at Nebraska colleges and universities express their desire to temper the intense political discourse that has dominated national conversations in the weeks following the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
