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.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act ushered in a raft of policy reforms on July 1 that will change how students pay for college and how degrees are valued. Future graduate students will likely be more reliant on private lenders to fund their education and find themselves tied to standard repayment plans, and institutions with programs that don’t pass an earnings test could lose access to federal loans.
Legal scholar Peter Lake argues that, taken together, the policies in the One Big Beautiful Bill will have a more profound impact on higher ed than any other piece of legislation in the last several decades. He also believes that the higher education sector could emerge more ambitious and advanced as a result. Lake explains more in this interview.
The time has arrived, and Workforce Pell is officially ready to launch. But states are at entirely unique stages of building their approval processes. They must determine whether a program aligns with an eligible occupation, meets employer hiring requirements, is stackable and portable, and articulates to a credit program. How they require colleges to validate these standards varies considerably.
New research offers insight into how 11 states are approving their programs and the criteria they use to do so.
When the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education voted last Friday to approve the state's first accelerated three-year bachelor's degree programs, supporters cheered it as a breakthrough moment for college affordability. Critics saw something else entirely: a quiet concession that some students—overwhelmingly those from working-class and lower-income families—deserve less.
The debate that followed raised one of the most vexing questions in American higher education: In the race to make college more accessible, is the nation in danger of dismantling the very thing it is trying to sell? Education analysts weigh in.
The public conversation about higher education often begins with what is broken: cost, debt, political conflict, declining confidence, and questions about value.
But that is not the whole story. Higher education does not need to ignore criticism, experts say. In fact, the institutions that will lead the future are the ones willing to listen carefully to it. But the story of higher education is not just one of skepticism. It's also a story of adults returning, students completing, employers partnering, credentials evolving, learning becoming more flexible, and communities being strengthened.
For student parents, finding childcare can mean the difference between stopping out and staying on track. LaGuardia Community College is stepping in to help.
Horizons NYC is a free seven-week summer program that combines childcare with academic enrichment, swimming, art, and field trips. The program allows student parents to keep working toward graduation while also building a stronger connection to the college community.
The Trump administration is delaying tens of millions of dollars in federal research grants to some of Texas' biggest universities. While many institutions hope to eventually receive approval for the money, the administration's plans remain unclear amid a larger overhaul of the system by which grant applications are evaluated. Experts warn the holdup is leaving some universities to put research programs on hold.
The delays in Texas reflect a nationwide trend, with National Science Foundation awards down 39 percent so far this fiscal year and the National Institutes of Health awards down 24 percent, according to this federal research spending tracker. Those two programs represent close to one third of federal research dollars.
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