The Connected Learn-and-Work Ecosystem

A guide to the key initiatives

A guide to key initiatives for the Connected Learn and Work Ecosystem by stage of progress, timeline, and relation to other related work.

ROI of Liberal Arts Colleges

Value Adds Up Over Time

The median ROI of liberal arts colleges is nearly $200,000 higher than the median for all colleges. Further, the 40-year median ROI of liberal arts institutions ($918,000) is close to those of four-year engineering and technology-related schools.

Lumina’s Commitment to Racial Equity

To Achieve Equity, We Must Focus Our Efforts

The promise of American opportunity has always been in sharp contrast with our nation’s legacy of racial discrimination and oppression. At Lumina Foundation, we pursue racial equity and its foundation of diversity and inclusion to combat systemic patterns of racism that foster injustice.

Lumina’s Commitment to Educational Quality

To Achieve Quality, We Must Focus Our Efforts

The country’s structures for assuring the quality of college degrees and other credentials awarded after high school no longer meet the needs of today’s students, society, or the economy. Policies and practices must be updated to ensure that the learning represented by all degrees, certificates, industry certifications, and other credentials will indeed help people lead fulfilling lives and obtain and succeed in better jobs, while also building a stronger American society and economy.

Some College and No Degree

How individuals who attend and don’t graduate feel about education

Over the past 20 years, more than 31 million students have enrolled in college and left without receiving a degree or certificate. Re-enrolling this “some college, no degree” population is at the center of many states’ plans for boosting the educational attainment of their population.

Focus Magazine, Winter 2019: Credentials that work

Today’s students use certificates, certifications to build bright futures

This issue of Focus magazine shines a spotlight on non-degree, workforce-relevant programs in three different states (Minnesota, Michigan, and Kentucky). The programs prepare adults for good careers in all types of fields, including construction, advanced manufacturing, health care, computer technology, and plastics engineering.

How Affordable Are Public Colleges in Your State for Low-Income Students?

Think students today can work their way through college? Think again.

Students from low-income backgrounds should be able to attend college without shouldering a debt burden or having to work so many hours that they jeopardize their chances of completing a degree. But that’s just not possible today.

Impacts of Key Community College Strategies on Non-Degree Credential Completion by Adult Learners

A series of reports around the benefits of non-degree credentials

Between 2011 and 2018, the U.S. Department of Labor invested $2 billion to fund the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) grant program.

Veterans Without Degrees

The Benefits and Opportunities of Certificates and Certifications

United States military veterans are far more likely than non-veterans to hold non-degree credentials, including certificates and certifications. Therefore, veterans are particularly harmed by the current lack of recognition, transparency, transferability and stackability of nondegree credentials. In addition, the veteran population is especially likely to have education and training experiences outside traditional education institutions.

The Leadership Model of Philanthropy

As the nation’s largest private foundation focused solely on increasing Americans’ success in higher education, Lumina Foundation seeks to maximize its effectiveness in serving the public trust through a leadership model of philanthropy, in favor of following a strictly charitable role. Merisotis shares his thoughts on how that leadership model can lead to more significant and lasting change that will “permanently alter the conditions that make assistance necessary.”