Bachelor’s Degrees

The bachelor’s degree remains a valuable credential, and colleges must better prepare people for work and life.

The nation needs more adults with four-year degrees.

For most professionals, a college degree is necessary to launch and sustain a career path, and the average differential in lifetime earnings among bachelor’s degree holders is undeniable. Some people who never went beyond high school or completed associate degrees earn more, but that is unusual and becoming rarer over time.

In many fields, earning a bachelor’s degree is often the first step in a career progression. A four-year degree can help people stand out among job applicants, particularly in fields that require specific knowledge or skills, or capacities such as critical thinking, ethical reasoning, and complex adaptive behavior. For example, business- and STEM-related fields, such as computer science, engineering, and finance often demand bachelor’s degrees or equivalent knowledge and experience, which can be difficult to demonstrate without a degree.

Hiring managers and supervisors are also looking for the kinds of knowledge, skills, and capabilities developed through the liberal arts and humanities. The liberal arts offer students well-rounded educational experiences rooted in subjects such as the arts, communication, history, literature, and philosophy. Through a wide range of study, students can gain a greater understanding of the world around them and hone problem-solving, speaking, and writing skills that employers value.

Employers want to hire people who have acquired specific technical skills related to the discipline and a general set of skills related to communication, teamwork, and collaboration. Through proficiency in these areas, graduates help organizations meet their goals and objectives.

Paying for college represents a challenging barrier for many people, especially for students and prospective students who are Black, Hispanic, Latino, and Native American, the first in their families to go to college, or from middle- and lower-income households. Additionally, attending college can be seen as a major social distraction, where students can lose sight of obtaining a specialized education to become more marketable to employers.

Helping more American adults earn bachelor’s degrees that position them for further learning and new careers, promotions, and higher wages is essential to meeting the nation’s talent needs. This work is especially important at minority-serving institutions and regional colleges and universities, where students of color and adult students from low- and middle-income families are most likely to start their degrees.

What it Takes To Return: Adults in Higher Education—Part 1

Millions of adults in the US have some college credit but never finished their degree. The path back into school a second time is much harder to navigate. We begin a two-part series by talking with adult students and their coaches to learn about what it takes to return to school. Listen as Juquilla Henry, her coach April Mesa, and Jamar Izzard share their stories of returning to higher education.

• Aug. 23, 2022

What it Takes To Return: Adults in Higher Education—Part 2

Institutions and non-profits across the country are providing new kinds of services and redesigning policies and practices to support more adults in higher education. In part 2, we talk with Malik Brown and Sena Owereko from Graduate Philadelphia, and from Dr. Ed Mills and Kaley Martin at Sacramento State University about how they are changing outcomes for adult learners.

• Sept. 6, 2022

What we’re getting wrong in today’s arguments over higher education

A new poll shows that more than half of Americans think a four-year university degree is "not worth the cost." But as so often happens in public debates around higher education, we're missing the real question.

• April 17, 2023

Why counting degrees matters

The new data are clear: More Americans are learning and training beyond high school to pave powerful paths to well-paid jobs. But progress amid challenges is slow, leaving too many adults without college degrees or other credentials to struggle in their careers and lives.

• Feb. 3, 2023

More adults earning college degrees, new federal data show

Lumina Foundation today released an updated A Stronger Nation, the foundation’s online tool for tracking the share of working-age adults with degrees or other credentials of value. The national post-high school education rate among adults 25 to 64 years old reached 53.7 percent in 2021, an increase of nearly 2 percentage points since 2019 when the percentage was 51.9.

Feb. 1, 2023

Lumina set a bold goal for a better-educated country 15 years ago. It worked.

In 2008, when Lumina Foundation committed to at least 60 percent of U.S. adults earning college degrees and other credentials by 2025, we did something that set us apart from most national funders.

• Jan. 27, 2023

Remarks by Jamie Merisotis, Franklin College Commencement, May 21, 2022

Good morning. Thank you, President Prather for this honor and for your leadership. In just about every way to measure someone in your important role, you have excelled – leading the college at a time of great societal challenge yet still enrolling more students, expanding student diversity, introducing new tech innovation and digital fluency initiatives, and pursuing a vision to prepare students.

• May 24, 2022

Education is changing lives at California’s San Quentin prison

San Quentin, one of the country’s most notorious prisons and the subject of movies, songs and TV shows, is fast becoming known for something else: rehabilitation.

• Oct. 18, 2018

Behavioral science interventions to promote (re)enrollment of adults

About 20 percent of American adults want to (re)enroll in the next two years, but many never do. Over the past few years, we’ve worked with ideas42 to review adult-focused outreach strategies, provide ‘secret shopper’ feedback to institutions, and develop actionable guidance for institutions and systems across the country. Resources include the Adult (re)Enrollment Design Guide which identifies common behavioral barriers faced by potential adult learners and provides 35 design ideas for addressing them.

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What we’ve learned about getting ‘some college, no credential’ students back

Promoting and accelerating bachelor’s attainment is an important component of Lumina’s current strategic plan. After all, as the U.S. Census Bureau recently explained, “Bachelor’s degrees are important marks of progress for both individuals and society . . . individuals who hold a bachelor’s degree or higher have higher lifetime earnings, lower odds of unemployment, and better health outcomes.” And we are on a positive trajectory: Bachelor’s attainment grew by 16.6 percent from 2009–19 (from 27.5 to 32.1 percent). Growth was even faster for certain equity populations, with Black populations increasing 25.4 percent, Hispanic/Latino 30.3 percent, and American Indian/Alaska Native 17 percent.

Equity-focused systems change in enrollment

Based on a yearlong process to engage constituents throughout the higher education community, This report recommends a series of actions for admission and financial aid practitioners, educational institutions, and state and federal agencies and policymakers. And it urges deeper study of barriers to entry to post-high school education for adult students of color, particularly Black students.