2024-10-08-The Colleges That Can Save America

States across the country have proposed or enacted legislation that hampers or eliminates diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts on college campuses. These efforts range from removing diversity statements from job posting to outright elimination of student support services. Erin Gretzinger and Maggie Hicks from the Chronicle of Higher Education gives us a national overview and Veronica Selzler from Hattaway Communications talks about a new toolkit designed to help bridge the communications gap.

This could be a challenging year for the 4 million or so people just graduating from college: While the National Association of Colleges and Employers reports that most employers say they will maintain or increase hiring, sizeable job cuts elsewhere mean an overall decrease in hiring.

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.

And my equity journey continues. Four years ago, I wrote a column about sending my son off to college and my fears for him as a young Black man finding his way as a student and citizen. Today, I’m the proud mom of a college graduate. Though the world shut down during my son’s freshman year, and he spent […]

If you want progress, work for justice. That’s a paraphrase of Pope Paul VI from 1972 amid the Vietnam War. Then, the sentiment was about peace. More than 50 years later, we’re still talking about justice—but now in the context of economic mobility and the promise of American progress.

In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s June 29 decision to end affirmative action in college admissions, a group of foundations quickly issued a joint statement condemning the decision, saying, “The Supreme Court’s decision impedes colleges and universities from selecting their own student bodies and fully addressing systemic racial inequalities that persist.”

What will American colleges and universities look like now that the Supreme Court has upended affirmative action? The evidence is clear: As we’ve seen from states that had already banned race-conscious admissions prior to the court’s recent decision, enrollment for students of color will decline. We can avoid going backward only if institutions embrace new approaches for increasing student diversity and abolish advantages for the privileged, such as legacy preferences.

Not that long ago, higher education advocates regularly complained about the lack of national attention on colleges and universities. A huge win involved a sentence or two in the president’s State of the Union or a governor’s State of the State.

Educational certificates, which have been around for decades, have become increasingly popular among students looking to gain skills to move up in their careers, or switch jobs.

Half a year after the Class of 2024 donned caps and gowns, even some highly skilled graduates are struggling to find jobs in their field or at the level they expected.

Medical billing, supply chain management, web design and development—name a field, and there’s probably a course available to learn it. Recent years have seen an explosion in the number of workforce credentials—degrees, certificates, badges, apprenticeships—over 1 million nationwide by one count. They are offered by nearly 60,000 providers, ranging from week-long courses to programs extending over months or years.

Given that higher education is all about developing critical thinking skills and challenging assumptions, educators should welcome the increasingly tough questions about the value of college degrees.

We’re facing a stark educational crisis: 41.9 million people in this country have attempted to earn a college degree or credential but left without one. This represents not only a colossal loss of potential for the individuals involved and the nation's economy, which is increasingly dependent on a skilled workforce.

At a time when bachelor’s degrees are more valuable than ever, only about 62 percent of this year’s high school graduates are expected to enroll in college next fall.

Community colleges around the country have found new ways to recruit and connect with students, and now they can show off tactics that work.

In this episode of Sparking Equity, host Lande Ajose explores the critical role higher education can play in addressing the climate crisis while advancing equity. Joined by Eloy Ortiz Oakley, president and CEO of the College Futures Foundation, and Jamie Marisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, this thought-provoking discussion delves into actionable strategies for colleges and universities to empower underserved communities, foster climate literacy, and turn knowledge into meaningful action. The episode highlights the intersection of climate change, equity, and education—and what leaders, students, and communities can do to shape a sustainable future.

The so-called “enrollment cliff” we’ve been waiting a generation for is nearly here, and we now have clear and detailed projections to help us as we prepare to reach the edge.

Higher education has an opportunity to use this moment of extreme stress to pursue genuine, urgently-needed systemic change.

Enormous questions confront America in this historic presidential year. But regardless of who moves into the Oval Office in January, we know this much: America will need more from our colleges and universities in 2025, not less, and we need to plan for that.

Marketers love them. Politicians court them. Colleges want them—badly. For the 69 million members of Gen Z in America, things might finally be looking up.

The devastation of recent hurricanes in the U.S. Southeast brings a sobering reminder that none of us can ignore the growing dangers of climate change. Hurricanes Helene and Milton gained intensity from warming ocean temperatures, to catastrophic and deadly effects on parts of the country that once felt safe from these types of threats.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: American higher education is failing millions of people, and the cracks grow deeper by the day.

The end-of-year news retrospectives are over, and the “what’s ahead” predictions are wilting faster than New Year’s party flowers. But one significant 2025 milepost got little notice: Generation Z, the world’s largest generation, now makes up more than a quarter of the global labor force.

We know what works when it comes to helping adult learners of color thrive at college. We know because they’ve told us what they need. The hard part is changing to meet those needs with practical solutions.

Courtney joins Jules Douge on WHCR 90.3 FM—the voice of Harlem.

In the fall of 2022, gun violence shattered the tranquility of my son's college experience at the University of Virginia. In an urgent call, he said, "Mom, there's an active shooter on campus. I think some people have died not too far from here. No one knows where the shooter is, so we’re all locked in our house."

Welcome to the era of data-driven transformation, where fresh insights pave the way to a brighter future. We recently unveiled new data in Lumina Foundation’s Stronger Nation tool, an interactive map guiding us toward our national goal of helping 60 percent of Americans earn college degrees or other quality credentials by 2025.  Even amid skepticism […]

Adult learners of color lean on trusted family and friends to help them decide if returning to college fits their hectic lives, according to three studies that explored how Americans choose to finish—or not—a degree.