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.
What were once familiar battles in the campus culture wars have escalated into something more dangerous: a struggle over the very conditions of inquiry, where violence, scandal, and political pressure converge to erode academic freedom.
Universities are curators of knowledge, not platforms for unchecked ideology, writes Davidson College's Gerardo Martí in this op-ed. Their mission is to cultivate, critique, and transmit knowledge while attending to perspectives that have shaped history and public life. The contrast between an endless marketplace of opinion and the rigorous pursuit of knowledge is crucial to understanding what universities are for.
The Trump administration has spent the year trying to assert control over universities by launching civil rights probes, freezing millions in federal research dollars, and throttling their international student enrollment. But last week, university leaders caught their biggest break to date.
That break came from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology when its president publicly rejected a proposal that would link federal funding to President Donald Trump’s higher education priorities on college finance, hiring, admissions, and speech on campus. Observers now hold out hope that other universities will emulate MIT's decision and reject the White House's proposed deal for nine colleges.
Over the past 20 years, the number of college applications filed to top schools has exploded. And while many American colleges accept most applicants, some parents and students hold tightly to the idea that prestige matters. In his new book, Dream School: Finding the College That’s Right For You, journalist and higher education expert Jeff Selingo argues elite schools aren’t always the best.
In this interview, Selingo explains why he wants to give parents permission to think more broadly about higher education.
Long Beach City College, a community college, is led by a president who was once homeless himself. Despite lacking dorms, Long Beach City College stands out as one of the few institutions nationwide that provides safe parking for its homeless students. California desperately needs it. One in five community college students in the state has been homeless in the past year.
Parking lots are no one’s idea of a permanent housing solution. But, proponents say, they can be an effective stopgap, and they’re a lot better than the alternative: students left to fend for themselves, searching for spots to sleep on potentially dangerous city streets. That’s where Edgar Rosales Jr. was before he found LBCC’s safe parking program.
When OpenAI released ChatGPT in 2022, it set off a firestorm among educators. Here was a tool that, with a few lines of direction, could gather reams of information, compose human-like sentences, and spit out an answer to seemingly any question. Students, they thought, would certainly use it to cheat.
For many students, that sentiment rings true. But not for all. Their reasons for pushing back range from profound to practical and speak to preserving a sense of community—and humanity.
The situation within the White House seems to be intensifying day by day—and it has a significant impact on higher education.
This podcast examines some of the federal policy changes currently happening on Capitol Hill, including funding cuts to minority-serving institutions, restrictive policies upending life for international students and scholars, the new twists in negotiated rule making around student borrowing, and the Compact for Excellence in Higher Education that everyone's talking about.
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