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.
Admissions myths tend to flourish around this time every year. Students assume they need certain scores, extracurriculars, or courses to get into colleges, but they actually don't. In other cases, they believe they are guaranteed admission to a highly selective college simply because they excel in part of the application.
Admissions experts attribute these pervasive myths to several sources, from social media conversations to word-of-mouth or parents’ outdated understanding of the application process. Many colleges are trying to step up to debunk this misinformation, but can they outrun the rumor mill?
Mitch E. Daniels Jr., who is back at Purdue University as its interim leader, has been a consistent proponent of the view that colleges have alienated the public with a left-leaning political monoculture and a high price tag—ideas that the Trump administration has used to enact sweeping new regulations and targeted investigations. Many of those ideas, including that institutions commit to transparent admissions criteria and contain tuition costs, reappeared this week in a new letter drafted with the help of several college leaders.
But while Daniels believes higher education should change, he also says conditioning government funding on reform risks harming the sector. He explains more in this interview.
Three-year bachelor's degrees are rapidly expanding across U.S. higher education, with institutions like the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and Merrimack College in Massachusetts adopting or exploring reduced credit programs. Proponents argue this model lowers costs and accelerates career entry, addressing rising tuition and preparing students for the workforce.
Critics, however, contend that by trimming general education and electives, these programs sacrifice crucial interdisciplinary exploration and broad intellectual development. Still others warn that in an AI-driven job market, adaptability and critical thinking—often fostered by these "extra" credits—may hold more value than specialized technical proficiency.
Artificial intelligence has become a routine part of how parents shop for colleges on their children's behalf, according to a new national survey released this week by education research and technology company EAB.
The findings mark a shift in a college-search process that for decades ran through campus websites, mailers, email campaigns and, more recently, social media. Increasingly, families are asking AI systems to synthesize that material for them rather than combing through it directly. EAB's data show that 84 percent of parents report searching online for college information on their child's behalf and that AI-generated summaries now often stand between families and the sources schools produce.
High-quality career pathways are designed to make the journey from school to career more coherent and less dependent on chance. At their best, they are built backward from labor market demand and organized around clear course sequences, meaningful work-based learning, advising, postsecondary options, and credentials that employers value. That structure matters because it helps students see where they are headed and what steps will get them there.
But strong pathway design does not have to mean rigid pathway design. Without flexibility, systems risk offering pathways that are too narrow for students, too slow for employers, and too disconnected from how careers actually evolve. States and regions are approaching this challenge in different ways: through enabling policy and frameworks, state and regional pathway models, and more flexible programs of study.
Thousands of University of California STEM professors have signed an open letter calling on the system to again require the SAT or ACT for admissions. They say they are seeing more and more students arriving to college so poorly prepared that they can’t solve middle-school math equations.
But not all faculty agree that reinstating standardized tests would help with the lack of preparation. Many are concerned that requiring the SAT or ACT could exclude students from less privileged backgrounds.
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