Lumina Foundation is working to increase the share of adults in the U.S. labor force with college degrees or other credentials of value leading to economic prosperity.
For too long, complexity has defined the road to college. Students sort through applications, financial aid, transcripts, and advising, often with little coordination between each step. This complexity creates real barriers. It can cause stress and doubt, leading some students to think college isn't for them.
Lumina Foundation is working to change this picture through its Great Admissions Redesign initiative. Today, a new cohort of grantees representing 10 states, systems, and institutions will receive more than $3.5 million to make admissions more proactive, transparent, and student-centered.
While several campuses in the University of California system turn away tens of thousands of qualified students annually, UC Merced faces the opposite challenge and has struggled to find students willing to enroll. The reason, in part, has to do with its location: about 300 miles north of Los Angeles, surrounded by farmland, including a 6,500-acre reserve where cows often graze.
Merced, which opened its doors in 2005, once hoped to reach 15,000 students by 2030, but officials now speak of a more modest goal: reaching 10,000 within the next few years. Meeting that goal is vital for both Merced and the UC system, which needs the campus to enroll more in-state students and appease lawmakers' demands to admit more Californians.
In the fall of 2024, Lewis University had 1,397 international students who accounted for nearly a fifth of the university’s total enrollment. A year later, that number was down to 870. By this fall, it may drop below 500, a result of the Trump administration’s campaign to curb the number of international students at American schools.
Lewis spent much of the last decade building an apparatus for international students. It spent much of the past year cutting it down. And although many believe that Washington will eventually loosen its policies, the timeline is so unclear that administrators are bracing for turmoil throughout Trump's presidency and perhaps well beyond.
From the crest of Bluebonnet Hill, Huston-Tillotson University offers a view that serves as a living metaphor for the current American moment: Below the campus, the glass-and-steel skyline of downtown Austin reflects a city transformed by the global technology industry. But on the hill sits the oldest institution of higher learning in the city, where buildings were laid brick by brick by the hands of Black students more than a century ago.
At the second annual HBCU AI Conference held on Huston-Tillotson’s campus last month, leaders declared that Historically Black Colleges and Universities will not be left out of the conversations—and opportunities—presented by tech’s newest boon: artificial intelligence.
Across the country, colleges are bracing for a sharp decline in the number of traditional college-age students. But one population group continues to grow: Latino students. Some institutions are addressing this shift by adapting their recruiting efforts and program offerings to support a more racially and economically diverse generation of learners, many of whom are the first in their families to attend college and come from lower-income households.
Messina College, a small, residential two-year school just outside of Boston, is one of those institutions.
Adults with some college credit but no credential represent a growing population nationwide. In Michigan, more than 1.2 million adults have earned some credits but not finished a degree, and about 38,000 more stop out each year, according to a new report.
State leaders see this population as key to reaching Michigan’s goal of increasing the share of adults with a credential to 60 percent by 2030. To tackle this challenge, Michigan is partnering with ReUp—an organization that helps adults who previously stopped out of college re-enroll and complete their degrees—to deliver targeted programs and resources that reconnect these learners with higher education.
