-
Jul 17, 2024 | 
luminafoundation.org | Wendy Sedlak |Jasmine M. Haywood
North Carolina’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) built a distinguished history of serving adult learners with a clear, caring focus on students’ needs—and now they are leading the way for others to follow. Today, with a boost from its 10 accredited HBCUs, North Carolina is at 54 percent overall attainment, with a goal of 66 percent for adults ages 25-44 by 2030. College degree and certificate attainment for students of color are rising, while persistent equity gaps remain.
-
Jul 1, 2024 | 
luminafoundation.org | Jamie P. Merisotis
Students are deeply concerned about college costs and the availability of jobs—but even so, more people than ever are interested in higher education. That’s the news from Gallup’s State of Higher Education 2024 report—and the fact that both those can be true says a lot about higher education in these turbulent times. Yes, there are looming concerns about the price of higher ed.
-
Jun 17, 2024 | 
luminafoundation.org | Wendy Sedlak |Ross E. O’Hara
By Wendy Sedlak and Ross O’HaraNot long ago, a college student said in a focus group that they’d rather fail a class than ask a professor for help. Many students in the group nodded in agreement—and they have plenty of company among students who say they’re reluctant to seek help, often until it’s too late.
-
May 9, 2024 | 
luminafoundation.org | Matthew Jenkins
Waterloo, Iowa, got an urgent wake-up call in 2018. Despite being one of Iowa’s most diverse towns with a major manufacturing hub, a financial commentary site listed it as the worst city to be a Black American.
-
May 7, 2024 | 
luminafoundation.org | Ramona Schindelheim
The Lumina Foundation-Gallup State of Higher Education 2024 shows that cost remains a major barrier for students seeking a postsecondary education, with 38% of students plunging deep into date to pay for their education beyond high school. https://media.blubrry.com/workinprogress/content.blubrry.com/workinprogress/WIP_Episode_316_Courtney_Brown_and_Stephanie_Marken.mp3“We have seen over the last decade enrollments declining in postsecondary education.
-
Apr 22, 2024 | 
luminafoundation.org | Jamie P. Merisotis
Higher education is in triage mode as it scrambles to lessen the negative impacts from this year’s delayed rollout of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Triage—the term for directing medical treatment to the most serious cases—certainly applies here. After all, the challenges in implementing the long-overdue effort to simplify the FAFSA have affected millions of families, straining the capacity of college counseling and financial aid offices nationwide.
-
Dec 13, 2023 | 
luminafoundation.org | Chris Mullin
Perhaps, like you, I doubted if college was worth it. In my first semester at the University of Florida, I spent a day weighing my options to drop out or stay enrolled. Why? Because I couldn’t sit through one more long, tedious class lecture. I had enough of being talked at. It turns out I wasn’t alone. The break between the first and second semesters is a time when colleges lose a lot of students.
-
Nov 20, 2023 | 
luminafoundation.org | Jamie P. Merisotis
Despite the flame-throwing heat in today’s public discourse, it’s actually possible to find agreement—to weigh two conflicting ideas at once. As F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, that is the test of a first-rate intelligence. Consider three common truisms about higher education:College costs are skyrocketing. People don’t need education to get good jobs. Americans are turning their backs on higher education.
-
Nov 6, 2023 | 
luminafoundation.org | Jamie P. Merisotis
Higher education is getting at least three things right as colleges and universities pivot to confront some of the greatest challenges in the nation’s history. First, despite its many challenges and need for self-reform, the system works in important ways. As The Hechinger Report has noted, people with education beyond high school not only earn much more on average, but live longer, divorce less frequently and are less prone to depression.
-
Oct 23, 2023 | 
luminafoundation.org | Jamie P. Merisotis
The road to higher educational attainment runs through every Hispanic household in America. With a population of 63.7 million, Hispanics are the country’s largest minority group, and today one in every five students in higher ed is Hispanic. The numbers make it clear: We can’t meet the nation’s attainment goals, or its workforce demands without giving Hispanic and Latino students the support they need to complete their educations beyond high school.