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.
Some state lawmakers and higher ed leaders are thinking up new ways states can support Minority-Serving Institutions after the U.S. Department of Education axed hundreds of millions of dollars intended for these colleges and universities last fall.
While some states are mulling new designations of their own that recognize institutions serving traditionally underrepresented students, others are trying to make state funds more flexible to help MSIs backfill lost federal grants.
Late last year, with his university locked in a very public battle with the Trump administration over its threats to cut billions in research spending, Harvard University’s president, Alan Garber, made a striking concession. Higher education, he said, was partly to blame for its predicament.
Garber joined a chorus of higher-education leaders who have become increasingly critical of their sector—via interviews, op-eds, podcasts, conferences, and anywhere else people will listen. Years ago, most presidents would have rebutted or simply brushed off right-wing complaints that campuses had become too woke, too leftist, or too political. Now? The collective consciousness of college presidents skews closer to agreement, some observers say.
Shuttering a women’s studies program, overhauling gender studies, and cancelling courses focused on race and gender are attacks on women everywhere. It conveys the message that studying women and gender is a futile use of time and resources. The cancellations also illuminate the troubling reality that rather than supporting the mission of public higher education, state and federal policies are increasingly functioning as instruments of censorship, writes Allison Butler, a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, in this op-ed.
Amid this turmoil, students are unwittingly caught in the middle of a political game, Butler argues.
A new report from The Institute for College Access & Success puts fresh data behind a troubling pattern that has shadowed American higher education for decades: for-profit colleges are disproportionately enrolling Black students, saddling them with outsized debt, and delivering far less than promised in return.
The findings arrive at a particularly precarious moment. Federal rollbacks at agencies tasked with protecting student loan borrowers are weakening the guardrails that once offered some recourse to defrauded students. For Black borrowers already carrying heavier debt loads, that erosion of oversight could prove devastating.
Astrid arrived at her community college to pursue a nursing degree with a high school diploma, a part-time job, and a plan. She was told she needed two semesters of noncredit remedial math and English courses before taking classes that counted toward her credential. However, she never made it to the anatomy course.
Astrid is not a real person, but her story is. She represents the unspoken student story of American higher education’s developmental—or remedial—education system.
California community colleges are spending millions of dollars on artificial intelligence-powered chatbots intended to help students navigate admissions, financial aid, and campus services.
However, some say these systems struggle to consistently provide clear and accurate answers, leaving students frustrated and seeking help from others on unofficial social media channels.
