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.
Parenting students face significant barriers to college success, including securing affordable childcare and covering their families’ basic needs, such as housing, food, and transportation. Those challenges can be especially acute for student parents in rural areas, where they may have limited access to services and resources.
Because many rural student parents are place-bound and have few nearby postsecondary options, rural-serving institutions are a critical pathway to education and economic opportunity. A new report from the Institute for College Access & Success explores the challenges rural parenting students face—and the supports and interventions that can make a difference in college access and degree completion.
While Texas’ more partisan efforts to reshape higher education—like banning diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, diminishing faculty power, and creating an ombudsman with subpoena power to police “political agendas” in faculty hiring—have generated significant attention, the past three years have also seen several attempts to increase degree access, affordability, and value.
The state has frozen undergraduate tuition and fees through 2027, pushed for the adoption of competency-based education, and revised the state’s “Academic Fresh Start” law to allow students to exclude poor grades as recent as five years old from college applications. And now the governor is pushing for three-year degrees.
The University of Michigan is putting the brakes on its plan to mask first-semester grades for students in its liberal arts college, which was announced in August and would have taken effect in fall 2027. Leaders initially called the effort an attempt to address students’ mental health concerns. The plan, however, was immediately met with criticism by some students and alumni.
Now, in a letter to university officials, President Domenico Grasso continued to praise the program’s goals and approach but says its ability to succeed has been derailed by “distorted narratives” in widespread media coverage.
Artificial intelligence could give colleges and universities new ways to personalize education, support students and employees, and prepare graduates for a changing workforce. That's according to higher education leaders and other officials during a recent forum in New York City.
Panelists noted that as institutions consider how to incorporate AI into their operations and classrooms, they must look beyond automation and efficiency. The technology could also give employees more time for work that requires human judgment, help students develop skills employers are seeking, and encourage colleges to reconsider how they are structured.
California will establish a state-level designation for Hispanic-Serving Institutions under recent legislation signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, creating a framework that evaluates not only how many Latino students a campus enrolls but also how the institution serves them.
Newsom signed Senate Bill 1255 on Sept. 30. The measure establishes the California Hispanic-Serving Institution designation for campuses in the University of California, California State University and California Community Colleges systems, as well as eligible independent institutions. The designation is intended to recognize campuses that excel at providing academic resources to Latino students and create a sense of belonging to help them thrive.
Experts still debate the timeline and scale of artificial intelligence's labor market disruption, but there is growing recognition that governments must prepare. In a recent open letter, 16 Nobel laureates and more than 200 economists and AI researchers urged policymakers to place AI’s economic impact more squarely at the center of their priorities.
The most ambitious AI policy proposals are still taking shape, but one step is available now: shore up the public education and training institutions that can carry workers from today’s economy into tomorrow’s. And community colleges play a central role in making such changes happen, workforce leaders say.
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