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Across Lumina’s State Attainment Collaborative (SAC) cohort, states are making significant progress in bringing people together to advance value- centered attainment goals. See examples of state progress.

Advancing an Aspirational Vision for Higher Education

The demand for short-term credential programs is growing, and state leaders are responding. In 2025, a total of $8.1 billion was spent across 34 states to help students and institutions deliver high-quality, short-term education and training programs. This growing state investment, combined with Workforce Pell, has states contending with new issues: How will states approve […]

Not everyone has to go to college, but everyone should know if they could. Across the country, thousands of students are finding out about their college options without having to apply. They’re already in, based on how they do in high school. Direct admission programs are clearing the way to college, instead of hoping students […]

A student’s course schedule is one of the most consequential (and often overlooked) factors shaping whether they stay on track for their degree or credential. Yet the path to earning a degree or credential remains unnecessarily difficult for far too many students. Beyond juggling work, family, financial, and academic demands, they can also encounter barriers […]

This report looks at whether U.S. colleges and universities have more teaching capacity than they are actually using. In simple terms, it asks: do schools have enough students to match the number of instructors, programs, classrooms, and academic resources they have built? The report finds that, in many places, the answer is increasingly no.

“Where can I learn to fix boat engines?” my teenage son asked one day.

Intentional Futures and Lumina Foundation collaborated to envision a integrated federal education and training data system.

At Lumina Foundation, data and measurement help us understand progress, support partners, and strengthen the field’s ability to help more people earn credentials of value.

For decades, colleges benefited from a simple assumption: prestige signaled value. A bachelor’s degree from a respected institution was widely seen as the gold standard, while community colleges and certificates occupied lower rungs of the educational hierarchy.

This search is being managed by NonprofitHR, a talent search firm focused exclusively on the needs of the social sector.

Advisors are among the most consequential professionals on a college campus. But often the systems in place around them don’t reflect that reality.

Every year, Gallup’s survey on confidence in higher education generates a familiar headline: Americans are losing faith in colleges and universities.

For many students, the journey to college begins with stress, not excitement. They’re left asking fundamental questions: Do I belong in college? Can I afford it? Where do I even begin?

Workforce Pell takes effect on July 1 this year. The expansion of the entitlement program opens access to many more Americans seeking high-quality, short-term training programs that lead to in-demand jobs.

Eiziah Lieblein, an incoming freshman at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, is using guaranteed college admission as a springboard to success.

The Federal Work-Study (FWS) program provides more than $1 billion in support annually to more than 450,000 college students with financial need nationwide.

State-led workforce investments are emerging as flexible and consequential policy levers during a time of economic change.

The Pell Grant program is the federal government’s most effective investment in college affordability, but the share of college costs covered by the grant is at an all-time low.