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.
Despite the loud and pervasive national rhetoric that college campuses are ideological battlegrounds where free speech is stifled, most students say their experience is much different.
A new study from Lumina Foundation and Gallup tells a quieter, more powerful story: Campuses aren’t crumbling under cultural conflict. They function as places where students feel safe, respected, and empowered to speak their minds—regardless of political beliefs, race, or gender. Lumina's Courtney Brown explains the data behind the study in this perspective piece.
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised to deport student protesters. In recent weeks, the president has delivered on that pledge. The Trump administration has revoked hundreds of international students’ visas across the country, spreading fear on college campuses and inviting constitutional challenges from lawyers and activists.
Eric Lee, an immigration lawyer, says the administration’s actions are unconstitutional. What’s happening, Lee says, is a threat to the free speech rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. He explains more in this interview.
For more than eight decades, American universities and the federal government wound themselves into an ever tighter embrace. The United States wanted to cure the worst diseases and be the first to explore the outer edges of the solar system. It wanted to grow more efficient crops. And so, it offered millions, and then billions, to researchers at universities across the country—in Cambridge, Mass., and Berkeley, Calif., but also in Minnesota, Indiana, and Mississippi.
The schools took the money. They built the best labs and attracted top-notch professors and students from around the world. Now, this mutually beneficial bargain is starting to unravel.
With more than 187,000 people sleeping on California’s streets and in shelters, the state’s homeless services industry is struggling to hire enough qualified workers to help them.
Last year, Santa Monica College set out to fix that: It created the state’s first-ever community college program aimed at training the next generation of homeless service workers. But the program has fallen victim to many of the same challenges that have long stymied progress on homelessness in California, including unreliable funding, high attrition rates, and political turmoil.
As the Trump Administration seeks budget cuts to lower the nation’s $36 trillion debt, education is in its crosshairs, and that has some college-bound students worried. There were already signs last year that fewer students were using the Free Application for Federal Student Aid; use of the application dropped 18 percent in 2024.
What’s it looking like this year? And to what extent should students and parents be concerned about those federal cuts? High school counselors weigh in.
California is introducing the first phase of its ambitious Cradle-to-Career data system, making it one of the few states with education data easily accessible to everyone. Now, parents, students, and others can go to the Cradle-to-Career (C2C) website to learn how many graduates from each school district attain a bachelor’s degree, how long it took to achieve that goal, and how much, on average, they earn after graduation.
Future C2C dashboards will focus on early education, primary school, college and career readiness, transfer outcomes, financial aid, employment outcomes, and teacher training and retention.
