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.
More than 43 million Americans have some college experience but left without a degree or credential. To bring these adults back in, we need durable systems that support learners throughout their educational journey and remove the barriers responsible for leaving them behind in the first place.
Redesign requires a fresh mindset, says Lumina Foundation's Mary Laphen Pope. Instead of asking, “How do we drive a surge this fall?” we need to ask, “How do we design statewide enrollment systems where adult enrollment is expected, not the exception?”
There’s a growing movement in higher education to make sure colleges provide degrees of real value, meaning that offerings lead to higher-paying jobs for graduates than if they hadn’t gone to college at all.
One of the key proponents of this idea is Harrison Keller, president of the University of North Texas and former Commissioner of Higher Education in Texas. On this podcast, he discusses his work to redesign degrees to better meet the needs of the labor market, the new priority on durable skills, and the reasons behind the elimination of some 70 programs at his school.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly progressing and poised to reshape the workforce in the near future. The higher education sector is in a unique position, as both an employer of millions of workers and a system that prepares students for the labor force.
In this interview at the annual ASU+GSV Summit last week, four college leaders weigh in on two questions: What about AI’s use in higher education has you most excited? And what has you most concerned?
Gianni Brescio needs to get something tangible out of his college education. He’s going to Georgetown University on loans, and he doesn’t have a lot of family wealth to fall back on. He’s majoring in global business, in part for its job prospects. But a course far outside his major opened up new possibilities. That course was an elective on comedy writing.
Recently, electives have been derided as distractions or worse, but they can also open unseen avenues in work and life.
Despite ongoing efforts by the Trump administration to root out campus-based initiatives that foster diversity, equity, and inclusion, institutional leaders should not confuse the administration’s anti-DEI rhetoric with the law of the land.
That’s the collective take of a law professor, two higher education association leaders, and a college president following the U.S. Department of Education’s withdrawal of a letter that sought to use the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ban on race-conscious affirmative action in admissions to further restrict DEI efforts on campus.
Standing at the bottom of the steps at Tulane University, waiting for her name to be called, Stephanie King took a deep breath. At 63, after nearly three decades in prison, she was about to receive her college diploma—something she had never imagined possible.
For King, who left high school as a pregnant teenager and earned her GED while incarcerated, the moment marked more than a personal milestone. It represented a profound realization that education could be the way out of the cycles that had once defined her life.
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