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.
A unique New England college just turned 40 years old. Landmark College welcomed its first class to campus in Putney, Vermont, during a time when few neurodivergent students went to college, let alone graduated. Founding academic dean Jim Baucom recalls that most existing college programs simply offered students accommodations, such as books on tape. There was no blueprint to follow.
As it turns out, that gap in the American higher education landscape created an opportunity.
Since 2022, there’s been a surge in the number and types of applications using generative artificial intelligence, but not all tools are the same. So how can faculty, staff, and students learn to identify differences and determine when it's appropriate to leverage these tools?
In this interview, David Watts and Michael Yankoski of Colby College discuss how their small liberal arts school has integrated AI into both classrooms and curriculum through the Mule Chat platform. With it, students try out different large language models like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and LLaMA, with the goal of learning how to use generative AI safely and effectively.
DeRionne Pollard, who is six weeks into her tenure as president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges, is calling on member institutions to position themselves more prominently in serving the nation’s educational and workforce development needs and to cast a brighter spotlight on their work.
Pollard says the country faces many challenges—from rapid changes in technology and workforce needs to federal and state reforms and polarizing politics—but community colleges can lean on one of their hallmarks to navigate through them: nimbleness. And that means putting their work in the center of national discussions in order to “reclaim the narrative," she says.
A blunt new report from the University of California at San Diego has ignited a fierce debate about declining student readiness and what that says about the state of higher education. The study, compiled by an internal faculty group, paints a grim picture of the math and writing skills of the first-year class at UC-San Diego, among the nation’s most selective and prestigious institutions.
For some, the report's findings emphasize both the possible consequences of eliminating standardized-testing requirements and the challenges of serving more students from disadvantaged backgrounds.
There is a well-documented shortage of skilled tradespeople. However, despite some progress in recent years, women remain acutely underrepresented in the skilled trades workforce.
Elaine McGuire is working to change that—and leading the charge to attract and train more electricians like herself: Black women. She launched the Philly chapter of the Electrical Workers Minority Caucus in 2023 and runs a pre-apprentice program, Rosie's Girls, to help young women get interested in careers in the trades.
As policymakers and others continue to grapple with the ever-expanding universe of nondegree education programs and credentials, making sense of the foundational distinction among them is essential to forming sound decisions.
Understanding a credential or program's core goal or intention for learners can significantly aid various stakeholders in determining where to invest and in navigating the often confusing current landscape, says Michelle Van Noy, director of the Education and Employment Research Center at Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations. She explains more in this op-ed.
