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.
It’s a long-running joke among academics waiting for news on their grant proposals: “If it’s not funded,” they say, “we’ll just have a bake sale.”
Now, facing a reduction in funding under the Trump administration, members of one cancer-research lab are turning a version of that gag into reality: they’re crowdsourcing money via GoFundMe to keep the lights on.
This month, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission announced a new pilot program called TN Direct Admissions that will pair college admission offers with personalized financial aid information for eligible high school students in Tennessee. The goal is to create a clearer pathway to college, especially for students in rural and underserved communities. As part of the effort, THEC and its partners will conduct a study to assess how different types of information affect students’ decisions to enroll in college.
Lumina Foundation’s Melanie Heath explains more about the program in this interview.
Last month, Manchester University, a private liberal arts college two hours north of Indianapolis, became the first college in Indiana to win approval to offer reduced-credit bachelor’s degrees.
It’s not hard to see why the three-year degree is experiencing a surge in popularity. At a time when politicians and families alike are bemoaning what they perceive as the exorbitant cost of higher education, three-year degrees seem like a perfect balm, allowing students to graduate and join the workforce sooner for a lower price tag.
As President Donald Trump works to reshape America’s colleges and universities, the man he wants overseeing higher education has deep ties to an industry often in the Department of Education’s crosshairs: for-profit colleges.
That person, Nicholas Kent, worked with the preeminent lobbying group for for-profit colleges and was a high-level executive for another that reached a $13 million settlement over claims it had defrauded the federal government’s student aid program.
For Alexander Lundrigan, the Trump administration’s treatment of student loan borrowers has represented a “gut-wrenching reversal.” He owes $82,000 in student loans and works for an organization that advocates for young adults paying back student debt.
Lundrigan and other student loan researchers share their thoughts on what borrowers can do now to prepare for upcoming changes and to protect themselves from payment delinquency and default.
Paid work-based learning opportunities lead to higher wages for graduates. Nevertheless, many working community college students cannot participate because they are so busy with school and their jobs. Most work-based learning opportunities don’t pay enough to replace regular employment.
But what if community colleges could work with a student’s current employer to create a paid on-the-job learning opportunity? Central New Mexico Community College is doing just that.
.jpg?upscale=true&width=500&upscale=true&name=istockphoto-1023578876-612x612%20(1).jpg)
