News & Views posts.
By the year 2025, the United States will need 60% of its working-age adults to have college degrees, workforce certificates or other quality credentials to meet social, economic, and individual demands.
A single Supreme Court decision doesn’t say who we are as a country—but how we react to it might. Before long, U.S. Supreme Court justices will rule on the fate of about 650,000 undocumented immigrants who are waiting anxiously. They have been protected by DACA, the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
Long before the pandemic and economic crisis hit early this year, states were working to prepare citizens for the workforce of tomorrow. Well, tomorrow is here. We are in the midst of the most devastating economic crisis we’ve ever known, layered on top of a deadly public health crisis.
The tragic, senseless death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police and the resulting cries of anguish have profoundly affected all of us at Lumina Foundation.
As the coronavirus pandemic hit, the response by United Way of Central Indiana was rapid. It knew it needed to provide relief for the homeless, for children, and for health care workers. And that was just the beginning.
I had the chance this week to congratulate family members of the Lumina staff in an online graduation speech for our colleagues as they worked from home. About a dozen graduates could be seen with family and friends in our virtual “crowd,” some of whom wore the traditional academic robes and caps normally seen at commencement.
The uncertainty and anxiety that COVID-19 has wrought on college students and higher education institutions has generated a flurry of articles and conversations about students taking “gap years” as a way to bridge the learning challenge that the virus presents.
The fourth-grade boy and Nancy Gavin had made a connection through fractions. Next came finding the areas and perimeters of different figures. Gavin started talking the boy through his e-learning math assignment. “What would you do now?” she asked him. “And now what?”
The sudden forced shift to online instruction, leaving classrooms and labs vacant, will reshape what it means to go to college. And the urgency of the pandemic shouldn’t distract us from seizing an opportunity for reinvention that centers on meeting the needs of today’s students.
Few institutions in society will be spared as the worst economic, social, and public health crisis in our lifetimes unfolds. That includes higher education - but we can still seize the moment to fix a system that’s long overdue for change.