News and views in higher education attainment from Lumina Foundation

Featured Story

Student Supports

Mental health Is A Major Problem On College Campuses—Here’s What We Can Do

Emotional stress is causing more students to leave college and keeping others from enrolling, at a time when people need post-high school education more than ever—and the country desperately needs their talent.

Jamie MerisotisMarch 31, 2023

Alisa A. Miller. 2015 photo from Chicago Booth

Lumina News

Tech entrepreneur to lead Lumina Foundation board

Lumina Foundation’s board of directors has elected tech entrepreneur Alisa Miller as its new leader. She will serve a three-year term as board chair. Miller began her board service in 2015, and she succeeds Kathy Davis, who will remain on the Lumina board.

March 31, 2023

Mother walks with child on public sidewalk.

Student Supports

We know what works to help student parents afford childcare. Communities can learn from this Maine program.

Many adult learners can’t afford hot meals or shelter. If they’re parents, they can’t afford child care. Three out of five college students say they lack the necessities of life, with students of color disproportionately affected.

Katy Launius March 28, 2023

Featured Podcast

Student Supports

Addressing Mental Health on College Campuses

Dakota PawlickiMarch 29, 2023

Danette Howard

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Danette Howard

Danette Gerald Howard, Ph.D. served as Lumina's senior vice president and chief policy officer until Dec. 2021 overseeing several of Lumina’s key strategies to increase Americans’ attainment of high-quality postsecondary degrees and credentials.

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State Policy

Lumina’s policy agenda centers on helping states achieve racial justice and equity

Progress is about partnerships – in racial justice and education as surely as anywhere else. In Lumina’ case, as we embrace a national goal of ensuring that by 2025, 60 percent of working-age adults have a quality credential beyond high school, that means partnering with others and encouraging best practices across the country through our…

Danette Howard, Scott JenkinsAug. 31, 2021

Racial Justice and Equity

Reflections on Lumina’s racial justice and equity journey

We are beyond fortunate to work for Lumina Foundation, a private philanthropy committed to making people’s lives better by expanding learning beyond high school. Ours is a critical mission—one that we believe inspires hope and seeks to make real the promise of the American dream.

Jamie Merisotis, Danette HowardMay 5, 2021

Racial Justice and Equity

COVID pushes higher ed and health care sectors to innovate and improve

COVID-19 is forcing two essential industries to change quickly—and no doubt, permanently. One affects our lives; the other, our livelihoods. They are health care and higher education.

Danette HowardNov. 12, 2020

Racial Justice and Equity

Here’s what it means to put racial equity first in the nation’s recovery and struggle for justice

It’s important, but not easy, to be hopeful at a time like this. We’re all reeling from the confluence of pain caused by the global health pandemic and the economic shockwaves that followed its onset. Our rational minds tell us that one day we’ll be on the other side of all of this…

Danette HowardSept. 18, 2020

Racial Justice and Equity

Howard’s Chadwick Boseman Was One of Us

I was sitting in my home office late last night, trying to fulfill a recent promise I made to myself to respond to all my emails before the end of the day, when I got the call from my friend Kobina. Like most of my close friends, I’ve known Kobina for over 25 years, since…

Danette HowardAug. 29, 2020

Racial Justice and Equity

Lumina is setting aside $15 million over the next three years to help eradicate systemic racism

At Lumina Foundation, we are committed to expanding economic opportunity and broadening social mobility by making high-quality learning after high school available to everyone.

Danette HowardJuly 15, 2020

Student Supports

The True Price Of Our Cancelled Graduations And The Woman Working To Write The Check

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.

Danette HowardJune 12, 2020

Racial Justice and Equity

Our story: Lumina staff share their racial equity narratives in commitment to justice

At Lumina, we’re committed to racial equity as part of our drive to increase education and training beyond high school. But we knew we couldn’t just preach that message to others without doing our own work, or considering what it means to ourselves, so now we’re sharing the personal stories of our staff about their…

Danette HowardFeb. 27, 2020

Student Success

How Virginia joined the shortlist of “Talent, Innovation, and Equity” states

Two years after white supremacists marched in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, state leaders remain determined to show their commitment to inclusion. The latest sign of that mood could be the state's entry into Lumina Foundation’s growing partnership of leaders working to increase the number of people with college degrees and other credentials beyond high…

Danette HowardNov. 13, 2019

Prison Education

College classes in prisons help everybody, and now more programs are proving it

In the last 40 years, the number of people in prison or jail in the United States has increased 10 times faster than the country’s population and now stands at more than 2 million. But after years of growth, the rate of incarceration has finally fallen, and we’ll see even more progress if we get…

Danette HowardJuly 22, 2019

Racial Justice and Equity

Equity: Everything and the kitchen sink

Equity seems to be the “it” term of the day when it comes to student success. You’d be hard pressed to find an institutional plan or statewide task force report focused on attainment that doesn’t reference a commitment to equity, diversity, or inclusion.

Danette HowardMarch 8, 2019

Racial Justice and Equity

Schools are backing improvements to the campus climate around race

The sight of torch-bearing crowds of neo-Nazis and white supremacists invading a college campus last summer was bad enough. But finding that some of the rioters were students—and thinking about what that meant—spurred us into action. We had to find a way to support improvements in campus climate.

Danette HowardJune 18, 2018

Prison Education

Educating people in prison helps them find jobs and helps us build an equitable society

Lumina Foundation is expanding our efforts to promote education among present and former prison inmates—a program that makes sense both on economic and humanitarian grounds.

Danette HowardMarch 21, 2018

State Policy

Achieving educational equity in the United States

Lumina Senior Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer Danette Howard explains how a new Talent, Innovation, Equity initiative will work to create a “talent pipeline” connecting people with opportunities to find good-paying jobs and continue learning.

Danette HowardJuly 12, 2017