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 U.S. Department of Education on Tuesday announced a drastic reduction in its workforce, saying it's set to cut about half of its staff.
The layoffs are the latest in a series of mass firings across the government as part of an Elon Musk-led effort to quickly reduce the federal footprint. The terminations at the Education Department also serve as a prelude to President Donald Trump’s plan to shut down the cabinet-level agency and raise questions about what will happen to enforcement of school civil rights laws and federal education funding.
Noel Pike was drawn to Colorado's coal belt after graduating from high school last spring. But days before starting his first shift at Craig Station, Pike injured his wrist during a workout and never started the job, complicating his plan to earn “good, fast money” at the mines.
Now, much like the town of Craig itself, he’s forced to consider what a future looks like without coal as a financial guarantee.
Just a few years ago, university statements on the day’s social and political issues abounded. When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, Harvard University’s president at the time called it “senseless” and “deplorable” and flew the invaded country’s flag in Harvard Yard. After George Floyd died under the knee of a white police officer, Cornell’s president said she was “sickened.”
But over the last year, more schools are making it a policy to stay silent as political pressure mounts against higher education.
Young people born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s fall into the demographic commonly called Generation Z, or Gen Z. Like any generation, they are diverse, coming from different economic, social, geographical, and cultural backgrounds.
In this interview, Yalda Uhls, founder and CEO of the Center for Scholars and Storytellers at UCLA, talks about a new study from her organization that says the American Dream remains desirable but feels out of reach to most Gen Z Americans.
Across the country, college hopefuls will soon be checking their inboxes, awaiting important, potentially life-changing news: Have they been accepted to the schools to which they applied?
On the other side of those decision emails are college leaders grappling with a different set of anxieties: Will they get the enrollment they need to sustain their institutions?
The emergency relief bills passed by Congress during the pandemic collectively provided about $75 billion for U.S. colleges and their students. The legislation brought three waves of funding to community colleges, known as Higher Education Emergency Relief Funding. But now that the deadline for using HEERF dollars has passed, campus leaders find themselves scrambling to secure new funding sources to sustain the initiatives they created or expanded with this money.
To succeed, many campus leaders have had to be highly creative.
