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.
A student’s course schedule is one of the most consequential (and often overlooked) factors shaping whether they stay on track for their degree or credential.
When students can’t access the courses they need, run into course availability issues, struggle to build schedules around their lives, or are unable to plan ahead, progress can quickly stall. Delayed completion often means additional costs, lost time, and a greater risk that students will stop out before earning a credential, write Lumina Foundation's Wayne Taliaferro and Wendy Sedlak in this piece on rethinking the course schedule as a student success strategy rather than an administrative routine.
Thirteen days before move-in week, hundreds of Howard University students learned that they had been unenrolled from Fall courses because of outstanding account balances, turning a moment of excitement and preparation into uncertainty and distress. According to a petition circulating across several social media platforms, the students state many of those balances were tied to financial aid, scholarships, or loans that had not yet been fully processed.
Whether the allegations ultimately prove accurate, the story reinforces a fear that has become increasingly common: colleges and the federal financial aid system often operate on different timelines, leaving students and families caught in the middle.
For millions of Americans, leaving college isn’t the end of the story. While many students stop out before earning a credential, they often plan to return. Yet re-enrolling can prove just as challenging as enrolling in the first place. As colleges look to re-enroll adults with some college but no credential, they are rethinking how to support students whose educational journeys aren’t linear.
In this interview, Terah Crews of ReUp Education discusses why students stop out, what motivates them to return, the barriers colleges still place in their way, and what it will take to build institutions that truly serve today’s adult learners.
With the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, entire parts of the nation's higher education financing system have completely shifted between last academic year and today.
But changes related to OBBBA aren't the only policy changes that students and their families face. Since the reconciliation bill passed, Congress has introduced three bills that could potentially undermine price transparency for students' financial aid offers and weaken consumer protections for certain loans. Marketed as "transparency measures," student advocates contend they would instead entrench the confusion—and leave the “nutrition label” for higher education further out of reach than before.
At Niagara Falls High School, students are encouraged to consider their careers upon arrival in ninth grade. By 11th grade, every student at the school must pick from one of five pathways, ranging from business and finance to design and engineering.
The shift toward career education comes as about one-third of seniors at Niagara Falls High are choosing to enter the workforce after graduation, compared with roughly a quarter a decade ago, says Superintendent Mark Laurrie, who retired in June. In a town that’s struggled with population declines, where now-shuttered manufacturing plants once dominated the local labor market, there’s an urgency to prepare high school students for careers.
A performance-based funding model for Texas community colleges has led to financial “growing pains,” Ray Martinez III, CEO of the Texas Association of Community Colleges, said at a Texas state Senate hearing Tuesday.
Martinez and other leaders sang the praises of the funding system less than a week after the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board approved changes to formulas that could significantly reduce colleges’ performance-based funding. The board made the changes after the state’s community colleges achieved student outcomes that surpassed what lawmakers had budgeted.
.jpg?width=500&upscale=true&name=istockphoto-1466982406-612x612%20(2).jpg)
