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.
In this interview, Amber Garrison Duncan, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Competency-Based Education Network, discusses the evolution of competency-based education from seven pioneering institutions in 2013 to over 600 institutions and 1,000 programs today.
Drawing from her experience assessing co-curricular learning outcomes in traditional higher education and later as a grantmaker at Lumina Foundation, Garrison Duncan explains how competency-based education restores the promise of economic mobility and how policy shifts like Workforce Pell and state-level innovations are accelerating the movement toward skills-based credentials.
When it comes to meeting the needs of rural students, higher education has a checkered track record. Rural students frequently express a lack of a sense of belonging on campus, and higher education institutions often rely on a limited number of effective strategies to attract them.
For rural students, student-centric colleges could be ones that offer flexible programs, usually online, especially for those who might have to commute long distances to campus. Collecting data also helps, because information about rural students isn’t consistently tracked or uniformly defined. Dedicated and targeted resources, like spaces reserved for those students or summer-bridge programs to recruit them, are other ways to surmount obstacles in enrolling rural students and helping them succeed.
It’s been a pivotal year for higher education, and that’s particularly true for college professors. The pervasiveness of artificial intelligence, the enormity of political pressure, and the severity of financial constraints on many college campuses have conspired to create learning environments of profound unease and uncertainty.
At the same time, many faculty members look at 2025 as a year when the promise of new technologies became more clear and the strength of collegial communities more crucial. Can a year like this be summed up in a single word? These professors weigh in.
Before Workforce Pell goes into effect in July 2026, colleges will need to determine which of their programs are good candidates for the new funding stream. And states will implement approval processes to ensure that eligible programs lead to good jobs. At the same time, many requirements for Workforce Pell do not apply to the standard Pell Grant. That includes a 70 percent graduation rate and a very specific program length, both of which may be challenging for states and colleges to navigate.
One college already has a program model that is well-positioned to fit the Workforce Pell paradigm and set the standards for its state approval process: Lorain Community College’s Fast Track programs.
Community colleges must shift their focus from simply increasing graduation rates to ensuring students earn credentials that lead to living-wage jobs or successful bachelor's degree completion, according to a new report from the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and the Community College Research Center.
The report, "Unlocking Opportunity: Eight Strategies for Community Colleges to Improve Post-Completion Outcomes," draws on lessons from 10 pilot colleges that have implemented large-scale reforms aimed at improving students' economic prospects after graduation.
Across the country, a familiar challenge is emerging: the workforce isn’t keeping up with the demands of new technologies. Employers aren’t just hiring for technical skills. They’re searching for people who can navigate complexity, work across disciplines, and make thoughtful decisions in unpredictable situations.
For years, efforts to strengthen the tech talent pipeline have focused on increasing the number of graduates in computing and engineering. That remains important. Now, however, experts say it's imperative to take a closer look at what students are actually learning and whether it reflects the challenges they’ll face in the real world.
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