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.
Less than a week after the National Association of Deans and Directors of Schools of Social Work called for a boycott of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings of master’s-degree programs in social work, the publication acquiesced, agreeing to postpone its next ranking until 2027.
Higher education groups of all kinds have long complained about U.S. News’ ranking efforts, both publicly and privately. Calls for boycotts—among college presidents and deans of law and medical schools—have arisen periodically. Typically, U.S. News publishes its lists anyway, using publicly available and previously gathered data. By blocking data collection for 2026, the deans of social work notched an unusual victory.
When the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students lost university funding and its home base at the University of North Georgia last year, supporters worried transfer student success would suffer. For two decades, NISTS had connected scholars who study transfer with the campus staff who facilitate it, disseminating resources and research to improve the process for students nationwide.
But NISTS has since found a new home thanks to the National Resource Center for the First-Year Experience and Students in Transition at the University of South Carolina.
Land-grant colleges and universities—institutions built using proceeds from the sale of lands taken from Indigenous tribes—are failing the very communities whose dispossession made them possible, according to a new report from the Education Trust.
EdTrust researchers, who conducted in-depth interviews with six Native American and Indigenous undergraduate and graduate students across four University of California system campuses, found three recurring themes: a profound lack of belonging, inadequate institutional support, and doubts about the economic value of their degrees.
When Maria, a 44-year-old single mother, decided to return to school, she was not looking for a traditional college experience. She was looking for a promotion. After more than a decade in manufacturing, she had accumulated industry credentials, college credits, and on-the-job expertise. What she did not have was a clear map to the degree she needed for that promotion.
Instead of guidance, she found fragmentation, confusion, and frustration. Advising systems could not see her full record. Credentials did not align. Transfer rules depended on where she started rather than what she knew. The problem was not motivation; it was system design.
Finding childcare can be a challenge for almost anyone who has a job and young children. It’s even harder when you work in the trades—or any other role that doesn’t follow a typical work schedule. One of the underlying reasons: Childcare workers tend to be in short supply, given that it’s a difficult job and one of the lowest-paid in the country.
The Machinists Institute, which operates seven registered apprenticeship programs, aims to tackle both challenges—rolling out an initiative in Everett, Washington, that will provide childcare for tradespeople in the immediate area and grow the number of childcare workers in the long term.
The University of Texas System’s governing board plans to consider a policy this week that would create new guidelines for teaching “controversial and contested” subjects and require faculty to disclose and stick to course topics outlined in syllabi.
The Texas conference of the American Association of University Professors blasted the proposal in a Monday statement, describing it as a “sweeping, vague policy” and calling on the board of regents to reject it.
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