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.
Antonio Sweeney relied on a mix of private and school scholarships, plus a federal Pell Grant for low-income students, to pay for his first two years at his dream school, Morehouse College. However, by his junior year, he had exhausted most of the outside scholarship funds. He filled the gap by taking out federal and private student loans. Now, in his senior year, his mother has come to his aid—she borrowed $24,419 from the federal Parent Plus program this fall and intends to borrow a similar amount for the spring semester.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities are on the frontlines of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act’s new limits on parent and graduate student loans. In response, some philanthropists are stepping up to help.
Inside a chandelier-lit dining hall at Brown University, 30 high school students from small towns scattered across the country swapped stories about getting their driver’s licenses, plans for after graduation, video games, and Taylor Swift’s new album. Later, the students observed classes, took a tour, and slept in dorms—all to picture themselves at a school like Brown.
These rural students were part of a three-day “fly-in,” a growing recruitment effort more top colleges are using to broaden their applicant pools. The goal? Enroll more domestic students while increasing the diversity of viewpoints on campus.
Ten community colleges and universities in Arizona will lose at least $13 million after the Trump administration cut discretionary funding to minority-serving institutions, alleging the money was tied to “discriminatory racial and ethnic quotas.”
The cuts—described by one grant administrator as a decision made with “little to no concern about the students"—are forcing some schools to end student support programs that improved grades and reduced dropped classes, while shrinking staff dedicated to underserved populations.
A new national initiative aims to transform how colleges use data to support students from enrollment through graduation, with a particular focus on serving underrepresented populations and closing equity gaps.
The Institute for Higher Education Policy and the Association for Institutional Research are launching the Postsecondary Data Action Network, bringing together 12 cross-functional teams from institutions across the country. The year-long collaboration includes community colleges, four-year universities, Minority-Serving Institutions, and Tribal colleges—all committed to leveraging institutional data to identify and eliminate obstacles that prevent students from completing their degrees.
Most of the nine high-profile institutions that initially received the Trump administration’s “compact” have rejected its proposed new terms of engagement with higher education.
However, the more nuanced responses that came on Monday—the administration’s stated deadline for institutions to offer feedback on the "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education"—signaled a willingness to speak with the White House and pointed to a continued division in the sector about how to interact with the Trump administration.
Soon after Donald Trump returned to the White House, his administration gutted the federal government’s central education data collection and research funding agency, the Institute of Education Sciences. Researchers say the move jeopardized the nation’s ability to figure out how to improve K-12 and higher education, as well as its capacity to hold publicly funded schools, colleges, and universities accountable.
But the president didn’t fully erase IES—which Congress created. Still, months later, it’s difficult to ascertain what the agency’s future will be.
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