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.
Months ago, faculty leaders across the Big Ten tried to push their institutions to adopt a “mutual-defense compact”—effectively a commitment that if the Trump administration sought to pull grant funding or otherwise punish one university, its peers would respond. Administrators didn’t endorse the idea.
Now the 18 universities in the Big Ten, which represent both an athletic conference and an academic alliance, have collaborated on an advertisement defending higher ed that will air during college football games. The 30-second spot blends a healthy dose of agrarian charm and shots of high-tech laboratories, highlighting the universities’ contributions to research, health care, and their communities.
A recent report from Ithaka S+R reveals a lack of consistent, available data on students in prison education programs, including basic metrics like enrollment, retention, and completion.
The report cites multiple obstacles to securing more robust data on these students, such as the fact that prison education programs, higher education institutions, and correctional facilities often have different, incompatible data systems. The report also notes that while some states are making progress, others lag, with limited data standardization and coordination across institutions.
After more than 10 years as the first African American male tenured full professor at the University of Idaho, Dr. Sydney Freeman Jr. has made the difficult decision to step away from his position at the end of next semester.
The departure marks the end of a transformative chapter for both Freeman and the institution, driven by concerns over safety, political climate, and the evolving landscape of higher education.
For years, community colleges in California have been struggling against fraudsters who steal millions of dollars in federal and state financial aid. But now state officials believe they are finally turning a corner thanks to new tools.
The game-changer? Artificial intelligence. Officials say AI catches twice as many scammers as human staff, with some campuses estimating that they are now detecting more than 90 percent of scammers, who are a mix of bots and human criminals, sometimes even located in other countries.
Many states embed pathways work into promising program models like Career and Technical Education, P-TECH, or Youth Apprenticeship. However, these programs can be difficult to scale and hard to access, leaving many students out of pathways altogether. Led by Advance CTE, Education Strategy Group, Jobs for the Future, and New America, the national Launch pathways initiative envisions a future for pathways that includes all students, not just “those students” who are enrolled in a pathways program.
In this interview, two Launch states share what they are doing as part of their statewide pathways strategy.
The U.S. Department of Justice is suing Illinois officials for providing in-state tuition benefits and financial aid to immigrant students without legal status who are attending the state’s public universities and community colleges.
Illinois is home to more than 500,000 immigrants without legal status, nearly 27,000 of whom are pursuing higher education. If they lose in-state financial aid benefits, those attending the state’s public colleges and universities could be forced to pay twice as much to attain their degrees.
