News Archive

A discussion on steering AI development in a direction that embraces humanity to build an economy that values people and those things that make us uniquely human.

Wherever I go, everyone asks a version of this question: Do people still need to go to college when artificial intelligence seems able to do more and more of our jobs? I get why this keeps coming up. The scary-fast advancement of AI has whipped up a frenzy of uncertainty over how AI will replace […]

Despite skills-based hiring shifts and the rise of AI, employers still value college degrees. For years, the future of work has seemed to be pointing away from the college degree. Companies have dropped degree requirements from job postings. States and employers have embraced skills-based hiring. Artificial intelligence is beginning to reshape entry-level work. And recent […]

Washington Monthly’s rankings look beyond prestige to ask which colleges serve students well, keep costs manageable, and create opportunity.

In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in SFFA v. Harvard that race-conscious admissions policies violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The decision had an immediate impact on how colleges and universities determine who gets into their institutions. Three years after the ruling, researchers and […]

Higher education has room to serve more people. Preserving that opportunity will require strategic choices about what each institution offers—and what they can offer collaboratively. A healthy tree does not grow by keeping every branch. In an environment of finite sunlight, water, and nutrients, unchecked growth can weaken the whole. Thoughtful pruning directs resources toward […]

For decades, America has enjoyed an extraordinary competitive advantage that we rarely talk about: many of the world’s most talented people have wanted to study here. We have gotten so accustomed to this advantage that we seem to assume it will always exist. It won’t, and the warning signs are beginning to flash. International graduate […]

This year, I’ve traveled 18,000 miles visiting 12 states across the country to learn how education and business leaders are strengthening the connection between learning and work. As employers struggle to find skilled workers and learners seek faster, more affordable pathways to good jobs, policymakers are refining what it means for a credential to have […]

The demand for short-term credential programs is growing, and state leaders are responding. In 2025, a total of $8.1 billion was spent across 34 states to help students and institutions deliver high-quality, short-term education and training programs. This growing state investment, combined with Workforce Pell, has states contending with new issues: How will states approve […]

Not everyone has to go to college, but everyone should know if they could. Across the country, thousands of students are finding out about their college options without having to apply. They’re already in, based on how they do in high school. Direct admission programs are clearing the way to college, instead of hoping students […]

A student’s course schedule is one of the most consequential (and often overlooked) factors shaping whether they stay on track for their degree or credential. Yet the path to earning a degree or credential remains unnecessarily difficult for far too many students. Beyond juggling work, family, financial, and academic demands, they can also encounter barriers […]

“Where can I learn to fix boat engines?” my teenage son asked one day.

For decades, colleges benefited from a simple assumption: prestige signaled value. A bachelor's degree from a respected institution was widely seen as the gold standard, while community colleges and certificates occupied lower rungs of the educational hierarchy.

Advisors are among the most consequential professionals on a college campus. But often the systems in place around them don’t reflect that reality.

Every year, Gallup's survey on confidence in higher education generates a familiar headline: Americans are losing faith in colleges and universities.

For many students, the journey to college begins with stress, not excitement. They’re left asking fundamental questions: Do I belong in college? Can I afford it? Where do I even begin?

Workforce Pell takes effect on July 1 this year. The expansion of the entitlement program opens access to many more Americans seeking high-quality, short-term training programs that lead to in-demand jobs.

If millions of adults say they want more education or training, why aren’t more of them enrolling?

We live in a world where language is regularly weaponized for political, economic, or other purposes. One of the best examples of that in recent years has been the way in which critics of higher education have seized on the term “liberal arts” to confuse and distort what is behind the term.

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.