News Archive

This month’s episode, Dakota investigates the creation of the A Stronger Nation data tool, and talks with Tom Harnisch of SHEEO on states that are making exemplary progress on attainment and how current state leaders are contending with ROI and changes to the social safety net. 

Workforce education has inspired plenty of enthusiasm lately, but enthusiasm can't bridge foundational skills gaps.

What if the problem with higher education isn't that students have lost faith in college?

Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, arrives at a moment of profound uncertainty about the future of human work and human purpose. The document is formally rooted in Catholic social teaching, but its central questions belong to everyone: What does it mean to live a meaningful life in an age of intelligent machines? What responsibilities do societies have to workers displaced by technology? And how do we ensure that innovation strengthens our magnificent humanity instead of diminishing it?

What if the programs designed to help people get by are also some of the most effective tools we have to help them get ahead? New research suggests that helping students meet basic needs can make a meaningful difference in enrollment, persistence, and completion.

The doom narrative is getting the shape of the problem wrong. Health, education and social services are hiring at close to normal levels. Tech-related fields feel the brunt of AI's impact.

Pooled philanthropic fund awards $8 million to inaugural grantee organizations, with an additional $10 million committed to a forthcoming open call

The author, an expert in college pathways, shares the personal and complex experience of navigating the admissions process with her daughter, highlighting that despite strong academic credentials, the journey involved confusion, emotional challenges, and the importance of fit, community, and support systems.

Clever campaigns create awareness. But strong systems create results. 

Four years after the debut of ChatGPT, the first class to have the powerful tool of generative AI throughout their entire college career will soon graduate. At the current pace of change, it’s worth asking: Are these students among the last to work with an all-human faculty?

National debates about improving higher education show one key puzzle piece for student success is often missing: the kind of meaningful, connected teaching that helps all students learn, thrive, and gain real-world skills.

An #EdUp podcast from ASU+GSV 2026 hosted by Joe Sallustio, featuring Destin Mizelle, Enoch Ellis, and Tobias M. Brown. with Destin Mizelle⁠, ⁠Enoch Ellis⁠, & ⁠Tobias M. Brown⁠, Roadtrippers, ⁠Roadtrip Nation How does a PBS documentary called Thriving: Black Men in Higher Education show young black men that a black astrophysicist, a black economist & a media psychologist […]

Community colleges are key to expanding equitable, career-connected pathways for Hispanic students, but gaps remain in attaining credentials of value. Strengthening clear, affordable, and workforce-aligned education systems is essential to improve outcomes, economic mobility, and meet future labor market demands.

In this deep-dive episode, we talk with experts and practitioners to better understand what makes a practice high-impact, the factors that drive institutional change, and the importance of authentically engaging faculty in the design and implementation of HIPs.

Through its Great Admissions Redesign initiative, Lumina today announced over $3.5 million in grants to 10 states, systems, and institutions that are leading a national shift to make admissions simpler, more proactive, and student-centered.

We believe there’s a better way for students to navigate to college. A way where students see their next move clearly, the route ahead is straightforward, and where stress and uncertainty are replaced with excitement—even joy.

Earlier this month, I was at the airport on my way to a meeting on artificial intelligence in higher ed when I noticed an ad for another AI conference. Headlines about AI dominate my phone notifications. I flip on the TV, and there’s more news coverage about what the technology means for our future, our jobs, our lives.

For a decade, we’ve heard that the college degree is fading. Employers are dropping requirements. Skills matter more than credentials. The four-year diploma is an outdated filter in a world of AI and rapid disruption.

Puerto Rico is the seventh U.S. jurisdiction with the highest percentage of adults ages 25 to 64 who hold postsecondary credentials, with 60.1% of that population having completed a credential beyond a high school diploma, according to a study by Lumina Foundation.

It’s hard to know what to think about artificial intelligence these days. The pendulum swings wildly, with some people warning of a robotic surveillance state while others dismiss the trend as overblown hype.

High-impact practices have long been part of higher education for years. Yet too often, they are treated as optional experiences available to only some students. A new generation of colleges and universities is working to change that by embedding career-connected learning directly into the fabric of the undergraduate experience so that every student can connect their education to meaningful work.

Lumina Foundation announces the selection of 16 colleges and universities from across the United States to participate in From Campus to Career, a national initiative designed to scale career-connected high-impact practices (HIPs) and strengthen workforce outcomes for students.

Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Indianapolis-based Lumina Foundation, is one of the nation’s top experts on providing access to higher education and the ways higher education can prepare the future workforce. Several years ago, he realized how the rapidly accelerating development of artificial intelligence could profoundly impact these two vital currents of American life. In 2020 he published a book titled “Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines,” warning that the roles of workers will radically shift and spotlighting the need to redesign education, training and the workplace as a whole.

When Lumina Foundation launched the FutureReady States initiative in 2025, we went in with more questions than answers.

In 2025, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) didn’t just get a trim. It got a buzz cut. The office already operated efficiently compared to other federal statistical agencies, but the cuts they experienced were drastic and shortsighted.

Reflecting on 2025, this show brings back key conversations that are sure to carry over into 2026. This episode revisits a conversation about American prosperity and Lumina’s new goal focused on credentials of value, a discussion about higher education’s role in shaping artificial intelligence, and a review of three states working to redesign admissions systems.

If you listen to the national conversation about higher education, you’d think campuses are ideological battlegrounds, students are disillusioned, and employers are quietly questioning whether degrees still matter.

Morehouse College student Tobias Brown traveled the country to meet leaders—all Black men, like him, at the top of their fields, who could inspire his education and career dreams.

When I graduated from college in 1986, I never once doubted that I would be able to use my degree to pursue professional success. I never wondered if the skills I spent thousands of dollars learning were already obsolete or if they would translate to my first job. I didn't have to ask myself: "If artificial intelligence can do this, then what was the point of going to college?"

Many students enrolling in short-term workforce programs aren’t new to college. They’re coming back.