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.
Last month, the Trump administration announced that 31 colleges had agreed to cancel their partnerships with the PhD Project, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing diversity among business-school faculty members. In the resolution agreements with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights was an unusual provision: that each campus provide a list of partner or membership organizations that “may” be violating federal antidiscrimination law.
The pressure to comply with such a granular demand illustrates the unusual challenge of weathering the Trump administration’s scrutiny—that even spending money on faculty membership fees in an organization that has a diversity statement on its website could draw the ire of the government.
Jazmin Guajardo, a student at CSU Channel Islands and a member of the California State University Board of Trustees, has seen students with the kind of anxiety that “consumes them” not only throughout their day but also outside the normal business hours of the campus mental health center.
Cal State leaders contend those are some of the reasons they would like to expand virtual, after-hours crisis support across the university system. Officials say students attended more than 5,400 walk-in or crisis appointments during regular business hours, placed at least 3,500 after-hours crisis calls, and were transported to hospitals 177 times in 2024-25.
When Michael Gavin stepped away from the presidency of Delta College in Michigan at the start of this year, he described his transition less as a career move and more as an obligation.
That “next thing” is the Alliance for Higher Education, a newly launched national coalition that Gavin is now leading as president and chief executive officer. With a sweeping vision and an ambitious structure still taking shape, the organization is positioning itself as something the higher education sector perhaps needs now more than ever: a big-tent, cross-sector coalition that defends colleges and universities not simply as economic engines, but as foundational pillars of American democracy.
Exactly one year has passed since Education Secretary Linda McMahon announced historic reductions in the U.S. Department of Education, laying off nearly half of her department’s staff and declaring it a “significant step toward restoring the greatness of the United States education system.” Despite predictions that the Education Department wouldn’t be able to carry out many of its statutory responsibilities after losing more than 2,000 employees, the agency remains standing—at least from a public perspective.
Union officials, policy experts, and some current staff members, on the other hand, say that several of the agency’s key operations have been rendered significantly, or in some cases entirely, dysfunctional.
Colleges and universities across the country are facing some of their steepest challenges in decades, including funding cuts, political controversies, and a revolution in artificial intelligence that is transforming how educators teach and students learn.
But some college leaders also see this moment as a critical opportunity to rebuild public trust in higher education, discard outdated practices, and focus on what universities do better than anyone else.
Will Mair, a Harvard University professor who studies aging, was getting ready to lead a panel discussion one afternoon last May when he saw a flurry of text messages and then an email bearing staggering news: Almost all of his research funds had been terminated by the Trump administration.
For Mair, 47, chasing breakthroughs felt critical and urgent. A century of scientific progress had added decades to average life spans, yet human bodies were still ravaged by time. He envisioned a new, interdisciplinary research center at Harvard where leading scientists would team up to help people age better, cut global health care costs, and ease suffering. Now, that dream is in jeopardy.
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