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.
Sonya Christian serves as chancellor of California Community Colleges, the country's largest system of higher education with 116 institutions and 2.2 million students. Christian, who has led the system since 2021, is a fierce advocate for guided pathways, workforce development, and four-year bachelor's degrees at community colleges.
In this interview, Christian discusses the advice she has for education leaders in communicating their value to state officials, California's big initiative for giving students credit for prior learning, the governor's recent $15 billion investment in community colleges, how the new Workforce Pell will impact Californians, and why she believes schools in her system should be creating more four-year degrees.
Across North Carolina’s public universities and some private campuses, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs are undergoing a major overhaul. The sweeping shifts in federal and state policy are reshaping higher education, leaving students and faculty to respond in real time.
The changes in North Carolina are part of a broader national trend to reconsider and restrict DEI initiatives, and they raise some complex legal and philosophical questions. What does “institutional neutrality” mean in practice? How can universities comply with civil rights laws while also scaling back diversity-focused programming? And what responsibility do these institutions have in addressing disparities among the students they serve?
Scott Jules was tired of dead-end jobs and not making ends meet. After he was incarcerated for armed robbery from 2018 to 2020, the road to finding a job felt like an uphill battle. Background checks alerted employers to his past, putting a red flag on his application. He knew they wouldn’t think he’d be worth the risk.
Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology represented a new future.
As Workforce Pell moves toward its July 1 rollout, a new survey from the National College Attainment Network reveals that advisors and support professionals are motivated but underprepared—and the gap between student demand and advisor readiness is growing.
The survey also highlights a tension that goes beyond the advisory field. Even as states and governors rally around workforce training as a priority, the Pell fund itself faces a budget shortfall—creating what one respondent called "a false promise to students who can't access funds even if they now qualify."
Private institutions, unlike public universities, are not bound by the First Amendment, allowing them to create, adjust, and interpret their speech policies as they see fit. Experts assert that college leaders' efforts to avoid unwanted attention increasingly dictate these policies. Under the microscope of big donors, politicians, and trustees, private colleges are growing skittish.
Students, faculty members, and others wonder how far the stifling of student expression will go, with many asserting that the rules are becoming increasingly convoluted and vague.
The National Center for Education Sciences represents a primary source for education data for policymakers, institutions, and researchers who rely on the information and insights produced to understand student outcomes and guide decision-making. However, the Trump administration's decision to lay off almost all NCES employees last year has disrupted those key data studies and resources.
The Institute for Higher Education Policy aims to help with the launch of a national project to reimagine the design of the nation's federal postsecondary data infrastructure. The multi-year effort—NCES Next: Building a Stronger Federal Postsecondary Data System—plans to harness the expertise of leading higher education researchers, data experts, and policy innovators who will create a blueprint for restoring and modernizing federal postsecondary data.
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