Lumina Foundation is committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025.
President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have floated a number of changes for higher education, such as barring accreditors from requiring that colleges adhere to diversity, equity, and inclusion standards. Republicans have also proposed creating new accrediting agencies that promote conservative values and allow state governments to take on the role of accreditors.
Much of Trump’s sweeping accreditation vision will take considerable time, require legislation or new regulations, and likely be challenged in court. Still, the inevitable disruption could cast a shadow of uncertainty for students concerned whether the colleges they attend will remain accredited.
The nomination of World Wrestling Entertainment's co-founder Linda McMahon as the next education secretary is sparking a wide range of reactions. Some online commentators are poking fun at the nominee and the carnival atmosphere of WWE, while others are embracing the image of McMahon as a fighter ready to bend the U.S. Department of Education to her will.
The diverse mix of responses shows how polarizing Donald Trump’s pick is and what lies ahead for McMahon as she gears up for a confirmation hearing to lead the agency that Trump says he wants to eliminate.
While other elite universities around the nation have seen precipitous declines in diversity in their first class enrolled after the U.S. Supreme Court banned affirmative action, the University of California, Los Angeles, is bucking that trend with record numbers of Black and Latino students.
Admission counselors credit UCLA's diversity success to a number of factors, including concerted efforts to build connections with high schools, community organizations, and families whose students the university wants to attract. UCLA faculty members of diverse backgrounds also have become more involved in the recruitment process—helping students like Madison Hamilton, who is Black, see themselves in their success.
Higher education is suffering from a reputation crisis, with public confidence in the sector declining dramatically. In 2015, a Gallup poll revealed that the vast majority of Americans expressed a great deal of confidence in higher education, with only 10 percent reporting little to no confidence. By 2024, public confidence had shifted significantly.
On this podcast, Lumina Foundation's Courtney Brown discusses the causes and solutions behind this confidence crisis—and why it also creates an opportunity for colleges and universities to transform their services to better support the needs of today's learners.
As a low-income, first-generation student from both Minneapolis and St. Paul, Jocelyn Ricard credits the Multicultural Summer Research Opportunities Program, known as MSROP, for changing the trajectory of her life and her college career.
Today, however, MSROP no longer exists. Following the June 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision banning colleges from considering race in admissions and a wave of state laws curbing campus diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, such pipeline programs, along with race- and gender-based affinity mentoring circles and scholarships, are facing fire.
President-elect Donald Trump is poised to pull the plug on President Joe Biden’s years-long push to cancel student debt for tens of millions of people as Republicans sweep into power in the coming months.
The move would be the culmination of nearly four years of attacks by GOP lawmakers and attorneys general on Biden’s student debt relief policies. On the campaign trail, Trump slammed the loan forgiveness efforts—which total hundreds of billions of dollars. Yet his team faces a daunting challenge: A series of recent court decisions has left the federal government’s $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio in disarray, with millions of borrowers stuck in limbo.
