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.
Earlier this month, Boston University took down pride flags hanging in outward-facing windows of faculty offices and the women’s, gender, and sexuality studies programs. In explaining why, Melissa L. Gilliam, the university’s president, drew a distinction between speaking for yourself and speaking for the institution.
BU’s decision, and the ensuing criticism, illustrates knotty questions that have only become more salient as colleges re-evaluate their speech rules and how those rules affect their relationship to the public: Where’s the line between private and public endorsement? And how active should colleges be in policing that line?
A new survey indicates that employers still prefer to hire workers with college degrees. But only 54 percent of those same employers say students are graduating with the skills their organizations need.
The report, from Gallup and Lumina Foundation, comes amid continued public skepticism about the value of a college degree and recent moves by several private companies and state governments—including IBM, Delta Airlines, and the governments of Maryland and Florida—to drop degree requirements for many positions.
Despite those changing requirements, survey findings show 76 percent of employers prefer candidates who have a four-year degree, and 78 percent prefer those with a two-year degree.
Nancy Cantor, president of Hunter College, believes colleges and universities have a critical role to play in leading the conversations around mass incarceration, health equity, climate change, and environmental justice.
This role, according to Cantor, means partnering with local community organizations and joining boards of social justice-oriented nonprofits—not just in name, but with the aim of leveraging the institution’s research capacity to work with the community and solve the challenges they’re facing.
As a boy, Majok Bior escaped a country engulfed in war. As a gifted student, he won a full scholarship to Duke University and looked toward a dazzling future.
Bior studied computer science at the North Carolina campus during his freshman year and was a winger on an intramural soccer team. After finishing the fall semester of his sophomore year, Bior returned to Uganda for winter break. He played chess with friends and recounted the brutal winters and demands of chemistry class. Then, the Trump administration canceled student visas for Africa's most talented individuals, resulting in vacant seats and shattered aspirations.
Winning a Fulbright Award is exciting, but to many first-generation college students, it offers much more. For these students, it provides an escape from a place heavy with doubts to a place where they are associated with a brand that showcases their credibility as scholars.
Yet these victories are rare. Selection committees often fail to fully recognize first-generation and low-income students, depriving them of the opportunity to become nationally recognized scholars. Experts suggest that if award committees truly aim to provide opportunities for students with diverse talents, backgrounds, and perspectives, they must involve gatekeepers who possess a profound understanding of these individuals.
Ghosts are typically the mysterious residents of haunted houses, horror flicks, and Halloween parties. But “ghosts” are also finding their way into America’s higher education system—swiping identities and stealthily shifting federal financial aid dollars into criminals’ pockets.
These so-called “ghost students” use stolen identities to enroll in colleges and secure and collect federal financial aid money. And then they vanish. Now, one lawmaker says he has a plan to address these scams.
