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.
With federal funding as its leverage, the Trump administration has mounted a sustained campaign to give the federal government greater oversight of higher education. By a wide margin, the American public rejects that effort—including the White House’s most recent foray, its proposed “compact” for higher education.
That’s the big takeaway from a new Quinnipiac University poll. Other recent polling also indicates that the public is concerned about the direction of higher education. But the Quinnipiac data strongly suggests that most Americans doubt that the Trump administration’s proposed solutions are the right ones.
Students pursuing bachelor's degrees at community colleges pay substantially less than their counterparts at four-year universities, but the affordability of these programs depends heavily on where students live, according to a new study from the University of Washington.
The findings come as college affordability remains a critical barrier to higher education access, with recent surveys showing 56 percent of U.S. adults citing cost as a major reason for not attending college.
Last month, Cleveland State University abruptly shut down the student-run WCSB 89.3 radio station, ceding control to Ideastream Public Media. The school says the move will create more experiential learning opportunities. Students, however, are skeptical.
Cleveland State isn’t alone in rethinking its approach to student media. Across the country, college newspapers, television stations, and radio frequencies are facing financial, political, and technological pressures. But students continue to fight to preserve control of these spaces, arguing they are critical to their learning experiences and free speech.
In recent years, Texas has received national attention for being one of the first states to ban all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in colleges and universities and for ending in-state tuition rates for undocumented students.
At the same time, the state has seen the number of first-generation college applicants more than triple in the past five years. Many of them are Hispanic. And the majority go on to enroll in college, according to advocates who help them with their applications.
In the hours and days following the University of Virginia’s deal with the U.S. Department of Justice, the state’s governor cheered the agreement while some faculty and Democratic lawmakers accused the public flagship of submitting to the demands of the Trump administration and, specifically, for UVA’s adoption of the agency’s July guidance against diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
Others fear that the deal—the first the Trump administration has struck with a public college—could serve as a template moving forward as the federal government takes additional steps to exert control over the higher education sector.
California State University, the largest U.S. university system with 460,000 students, recently embarked on a public-private campaign—with corporate titans that included Amazon, OpenAI, and Nvidia—to position the school as the nation’s “first and largest AI-empowered” university.
One of CSU's central goals is to make generative AI tools, which can produce humanlike texts and images, available across the school’s 22 campuses. Cal State also wants to embed chatbots in teaching and learning and prepare students for “increasingly AI-driven” careers.
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