Lumina Foundation is committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025.
Katherine Narvaez, a third-year medical student at SUNY Upstate Medical University, is feeling an all-too-familiar fear and sense of uncertainty as the country nears Election Day.
She's not alone. Approximately 400,000 undocumented students are enrolled at U.S. colleges and universities—most without protections from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. They find themselves in a precarious position, awaiting the outcome of an election where the candidates are expected to pursue vastly different immigration policy agendas. The results could potentially have far-reaching effects on them and their families.
People tend to think about equity in higher education in terms of how colleges treat students who apply. But there's a little-known industry called enrollment management that plays a big role in who gets the glossy brochures and who gets ignored.
The general public has limited knowledge about college enrollment managers and the extensive network of private consultants who determine recruitment decisions. Yet the industry has been around since the 1970s—and, despite having come about in response to genuine financial pressures on schools, some recruiting practices continue to limit college access and affordability for certain individuals, including students of color and low-income students.
Melvyn Hernandez and volunteers across California’s colleges and universities are trying to add something important to the endless to-do list of the typical college student this fall: a crash course in Elections 101.
In a year when barriers to students voting in states like North Carolina and Arizona have made headlines, California students are getting out the word about key election deadlines and directing their peers to nearby polling places. They’re also raising awareness about down-ballot contests that directly affect students’ lives—such as a proposed minimum wage increase—but which could get lost in the noise of a contentious presidential race.
William Muir heard about Intel's plans to build two chip manufacturing plants at a cost of $20 billion in New Albany, Ohio, 15 miles northeast of Columbus, from his Uber driver.
That decision is estimated to bring 3,000 new jobs. And, like an NFL general manager, the semiconductor chip behemoth is casting a wide net to recruit talent to fuel its workforce, partnering with several community colleges to design the curriculum and ready students for entry-level positions that require anything from a certificate of completion to an associate degree or higher.
Like much of America, higher education is consumed with uncertainty over Tuesday’s presidential election.
The uncertainty has many in higher education tight-lipped about what they expect, and especially worried about political backlash that seems certain if Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, prevails. Among the areas in the crosshairs: A roll-back of current Title IX regulations, possible elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, more investigations into campus antisemitism, promised mass deportations, and scrutiny of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
The troubled rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid threatened to become yet another barrier in the nation’s challenging college access landscape. With months-long delays and technical glitches, many feared this modernization effort would inadvertently deepen the divide between students with resources to navigate the historically bureaucratic hurdles and those without.
Yet, in this moment of systemic challenge, some college and university leaders took the FAFSA rollout challenges as a “call to action” of their own—an opportunity to rethink how they leverage resources, reach students and families, and create systems and processes that do not rely on the timeliness or accuracy of the federal government.
