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.
The “gravy train.” That’s what a Hawai‘i state senator called the practice of awarding tenure to university research faculty when she proposed legislation stripping this long-standing form of job protection from them.
The bill got little notice at the time. Now, obscured by the turmoil of the many other challenges to higher education since the start of Donald Trump’s second presidential term, tenure has come under siege in states across the country.
Phillip Levine, an economics professor at Wellesley College, has been studying college financial aid and students’ higher ed spending habits for more than a decade. When his children started applying to college about 15 years ago, he was amazed by how difficult it was to get an answer on how much it was really going to cost them—and he was a trained economist.
Since then, Levine has worked on a number of college cost transparency initiatives. His most recent project, the Instant Net Price Estimator, is a streamlined digital tool designed to help colleges stand out and provide families with a clear estimate of college costs.
With hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants on the line, being in compliance with federal directives is “the No. 1 thing we want to do,” says Andy Johns, senior associate vice chancellor for research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
These days, however, no one’s quite sure how to do that.
The National Postsecondary Student Aid Study—administered by the Institute of Education Sciences—is one of the only nationally representative datasets that offers a comprehensive view of students’ college access, progress, degree completion, and employment outcomes. NPSAS includes critical insights about student populations often overlooked in other data collections, such as student parents. These details are essential to informing policies that help ensure all students have the support and resources to succeed.
David Radwin, a senior researcher at California Competes, weighs in on how NPSAS data elevated the needs and experiences of student parents in California.
As colleges across the country cut staff, implement hiring freezes, and slash budgets, fewer people could see higher education as a long-term career path.
In this interview, Kevin McClure, professor of higher education and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, offers insight on what this environment means for the future of the higher education workforce and how the sector can still attract the next generation of faculty and staff.
Andrew is a motivated student who graduated high school early with impressive dual-enrollment credits. After attending a private college for a year and taking some time to work, he rekindled his educational ambitions at a community college. With approximately 30 credits remaining for his bachelor’s degree, he applied to an R-1 university, ready to complete his journey.
Yet, what should have been a seamless transition became an unexpected challenge.
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