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.
Today, 43 million people fall into the “some college, no credential” category, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. These individuals all begin college with hopes and dreams and leave without the credential they believed would shape the rest of their lives. Their reasons for leaving vary. Some may be only a semester short of graduating. Others drop out because of financial instability, family responsibilities, illness, mental health challenges, or burnout.
In this photo essay, Aaron, Alina, Dupree, and Sylvie share their college experience—and how life then intervened before they could complete their journey.
The rise of artificial intelligence is dramatically changing the way students learn, and that has teachers and professors rethinking how to teach critical thinking in the age of AI. The technology is also threatening to upend the relationship between more schooling and economic advancement, experts say.
In this interview, Matt Barnum, editor and columnist with Chalkbeat, explores the current and future impact of AI on today's students—including the way it is altering how they learn, study, and plan for the future.
When Imperial Valley College launched a new program training students to become plant operators and technicians in the emerging lithium industry, Corban Dillon enrolled in the inaugural class. But when he completed his certificate, lithium jobs weren’t available yet.
The situation speaks to a conundrum faced by local colleges when a new industry promises to come to town: Local residents want the new jobs. Companies say they want to hire local residents, but they’d need additional skills and training. In the middle are schools like Imperial Valley College, left to figure out the best timing to launch a new program that will prepare students for the new industry: soon enough that they can apply for jobs before they’re filled by skilled out-of-towners, but not so soon that students are left waiting for jobs.
For more than a century, Lawrence, Massachusetts, has been known as the Immigrant City—a place where wave after wave of newcomers arrived, took the hardest jobs, and rebuilt their lives within earshot of the Merrimack River mills that gave the city its reason for being.
Northern Essex Community College has always been Lawrence’s institution—the place where the children and grandchildren of those immigrants came to become nurses and electricians and early childhood educators. They came to learn English and earn credentials and move into the middle class. That mission has never felt more urgent, or more precarious, than it does right now, say access advocates.
If millions of adults say they want more education or training, why aren’t more of them enrolling?
It’s not because of a lack of interest or motivation. Rather, the gap between interest and enrollment reflects a growing mismatch between the realities of adult learners’ lives and how colleges are designed to serve them, write Lumina Foundation's Wendy Sedlak and Mary Laphen Pope in this perspective piece. The challenge now is to remove the barriers standing between intent and opportunity.
As colleges grapple with a public opinion challenge, a new report by the American Association of Colleges and Universities says that not only does low confidence create issues for institutions, it leaves them open to political attacks on their independence.
AACU's research suggests the root cause of low public trust is institutions’ lack of trustworthiness. To regain trust, university leaders must proactively take more accountability on behalf of their institutions, build stronger community partnerships, and show their value—even to community members who never enroll, the report says.
