Lumina Foundation is committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025.
In the days following Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016, dozens of college leaders sent messages to their campuses, seeking to address widespread shock at the electoral upset and offer support to worried students and faculty members.
Now, as a second Trump presidency looms, campus leaders have so far been more restrained. Some find themselves bound by new institutional-neutrality policies, many of which were put in place following backlash to pointed statements from some presidents about protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Will that stance change in the weeks ahead?
In 1986, when Damon L. Williams, Jr. was seven years old, he and his family received an invitation to attend a friend’s birthday party at a local golfing country club. He had been very excited to attend, until the week of the event. “We got uninvited, because Blacks weren’t allowed in the country club,” recalls Williams.
That experience would ultimately prove life changing. Williams began to see exclusion everywhere, not just for himself, but for others who had been minimized or discounted. Those same feelings later set the stage for his work to help all students gain access to higher education.
When Alejandra Lopez, a second-year political science student at Cal Poly Pomona, saw swing states that had gone for Joe Biden in 2020 leaning red for Donald J. Trump on Nov. 5, 2024, it felt like déjà vu. For Lopez, the stakes were personal. Both of her parents are undocumented immigrants from Mexico who have lived in the United States for almost 20 years.
California advocates say Lopez's fear is palpable and justifiable, as Trump has pledged to enact mass deportation of undocumented immigrants. However, they also urge colleges and universities to make sure students and families know about policies to protect their rights.
As the reality of a second presidential term for Donald J. Trump became clear Wednesday, D.C. policy circles began the work of decoding campaign trail rhetoric and Republican priorities to determine how his return to the White House could affect higher education.
Speculation has run rampant in the months leading up to the election that Trump may seek to shut down the U.S. Department of Education, implement more oversight for accreditors, and kill student loan forgiveness efforts. But rhetoric and reality often diverge for the president-elect, leaving many experts speculating about his policy priorities and more questions than answers before he assumes office in 2025.
When Vice President Kamala Harris conceded the presidential race to Donald J. Trump, she did so in a speech at Howard University, her alma mater. Many of her supporters, including students, shed tears as she told them to "never give up the fight for our democracy" and to not despair about the days ahead.
Many students at the Historically Black College and University are heeding her words, using them as inspiration to overcome the barriers they believe persist for Black people. "I feel like a change is going to come, and it's going to be myself and my generation that will have to bring it," declared one student.
Every year, nearly 70,000 Americans suffer the consequences of heat exposure. Many of these individuals are Black workers, employed in frontline industry roles such as trucking and warehouse jobs.
Michael Collins, vice president of the Center for Racial Economic Equity at Jobs for the Future, wants to change this trajectory. Collins is part of a new project to support six community colleges as they seek to increase the success of Black students in accessing and completing programs that lead to high-wage jobs in growing industries. The goal is to take the lessons learned from the three-year effort to help other colleges and different groups of students.
