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.
As artificial intelligence transforms how people work, learn, and live, it’s making a college degree and the skills gained in a bachelor’s program more important than ever. But even as the degree continues to deliver strong returns, it must evolve. Higher education needs to be more accessible, more affordable, and more relevant to today’s learners and the jobs they’ll pursue.
Indeed, the future does not need to belong to machines. It can and should belong to humans who know how to think creatively, solve complex problems, act ethically, connect with other people with respect, and adapt with resilience—and that's what a bachelor's degree delivers, writes Lumina Foundation's Debra Humphreys in this piece for U.S. News & World Report.
TransparUNCy’s mission is simple: inform students “who controls your education, how they do it, and what they don’t want you to know,” Toby Posel, a senior history major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said on a Signal call Feb. 12. Posel describes TransparUNCy as a “political education project” aimed at undergraduates.
But faculty members say it’s had a far greater impact: The four-year-old student-run activist group has become one of the public flagship’s most effective watchdogs.
The official charged with carrying out the Trump administration’s higher-education agenda has a particular diagnosis for what’s ailing colleges.
Under Nicholas Kent, undersecretary of education, the U.S. Department of Education's plans to overhaul regulations for accreditation are quickly taking shape, with a singular focus on more accountability for student outcomes, streamlined processes for approving new accreditors, and reduced administrative costs and burdens.
Bob Zemsky is a pioneer in market analysis of higher education and served as the founding director of the University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Research on Higher Education, one of the country’s leading public policy centers specializing in educational research and analysis.
In this interview, Zemsky talks about his biggest project yet: championing three-year bachelor’s degrees in the United States. Zemsky argues that higher education needs reform, and three-year degrees are the solution. His message to colleges is simple: Try it—you might like it.
The average cost of attending a four-year college in the United States has reached $38,270 per student annually—and when student loan interest and lost wages are factored in, earning a bachelor's degree can ultimately cost upwards of $500,000, according to a new report tracking higher education expenses through the 2022-23 academic year.
The findings, published by the Education Data Initiative and drawing on data from the National Center for Education Statistics, paint a stark portrait of college affordability in America at a moment when student debt has become a defining political and economic issue.
The Trump administration is about to launch a new repayment plan for federal student loans tied to a borrower’s income. The Repayment Assistance Plan will roll out this summer, and the U.S. Department of Education is touting it as an affordable repayment option for borrowers.
But critics argue that RAP, which is intended to replace several popular income-driven repayment plans that are being phased out, will trap borrowers in debt for decades. And the plan may have a particularly troubling feature that could cause monthly student loan payments to arbitrarily jump after borrowers experience a small increase to their income.
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