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.
Higher education leaders are warning that proposed federal policy changes could create new barriers for students, particularly women and those from marginalized communities, as the Trump administration moves forward with significant funding cuts and program reclassifications.
Those concerns took center stage recently during a convening hosted by the American Association of University Women. Among other things, academic leaders discussed the potential impact of a proposed reclassification of several professional degrees—including nursing, education, public health, social work and counseling—as well as broader federal funding cuts that affect colleges and universities nationwide.
The year 2025 was a record-setting one for education censorship; more than half of U.S. college and university students now study in a state with at least one law or policy restricting what can be taught or how college campuses can operate, according to a new report from PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for campus free speech and press freedom.
Last year, lawmakers in 32 states introduced a combined 93 bills that censor higher education. Of those, 21 bills were enacted in 15 states: Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
Last week, the U.S. Department of Labor released a forecasted funding opportunity for a $145 million Pay-for-Performance Incentive Payments Program that aims to expand apprenticeships. The effort is one step toward the goal that President Donald Trump declared via an Executive Order last spring: to reach and surpass one million new active apprentices as part of a push to prepare Americans for the high-paying, skilled-trades jobs of the future.
But will it work? That will depend on the details to come, experts say.
As more college applicants decide to take entrance exams and elite schools return to pre-pandemic norms to require the SAT or ACT, students face a key question: Which test should they take?
Overwhelmingly, students have picked the SAT in the past few years, making it the most popular standardized test for U.S. high schoolers applying to college. Among the class of 2025, 45 percent more students took the SAT than the ACT. To regain market share, the ACT is responding with significant reforms. Company executives say they are already seeing positive results.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger of Virginia wasted no time in altering the tenor of the board that controls the University of Virginia, appointing 10 new members to the 17-member body within hours of being inaugurated. She also acted to revamp the boards of two other state schools.
Prior to that, Spanberger asked five board members at the University of Virginia, all appointees of her Republican predecessor, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, to step aside. The swift change in university leadership followed more than a year of partisan acrimony over the university’s direction.
Lynette Duncan is the director of institutional research at John Brown University, where she runs a one-person office that handles university data collections and analyses. Just last year, she spent months collecting and crunching new data to comply with a new federal rule requiring that colleges show that their graduates are prepared for good jobs.
Then, in mid-December, another mandate abruptly arrived—this one at the request of President Donald Trump. Colleges were ordered to compile seven years of admissions data, broken down by race, sex, grades, SAT or ACT scores, and family income. By all accounts, it’s a ton of work, and at small institutions, the task falls largely on a single administrator or even the registrar.
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