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.
Shalom Nwaokolo and his wife, Ashley, are creating a permanent digital preservation of Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois. Any future visits to the college will be virtual, with images captured just before the institution closed in May so students and alumni can remember the campus, which is being sold off to repay more than $26 million worth of debt and other liabilities.
Memorializing colleges and universities in virtual reality is a sentimental response to their accelerating closures and projected closures. So pronounced has this trend become, however, that it’s also resulting in more consequential steps that speak to the intensifying threat of plummeting enrollments, rising debt, and other challenges.
The University of Texas at Tyler is offering voluntary separation packages to about a quarter of its employees. The move is surprising for an institution like this one. Offers of early retirement or incentives for professors and staff members to look elsewhere for opportunities have become common for colleges investigating how to balance tight budgets.
But UT Tyler isn’t a struggling private institution or an obscure regional public campus. It’s an arm of a booming system and has seen record enrollment every fall for years. It enrolled 11,602 students in the fall of 2025 on its campuses in East Texas, a 10-percent increase over the preceding fall class.
As the cost of higher education continues to soar, universities are attracting more scrutiny about the value of a four-year degree. Now, the Trump administration is responding to those questions with a set of policies that scale back the federal government’s student loan program.
Ron Lieber, who writes about personal finance for The New York Times, explains what the new changes are and how they might reshape higher education in America.
Colleges often frame admissions changes like test-optional policies and athletic recruiting as student-centric, promoting fairness and accessibility. Yet, these policies also significantly serve institutional interests, such as increasing applications, securing revenue, and fostering alumni support. While institutional incentives aren't wrong, portraying them solely as student benefits obscures a critical reality.
Admissions have become increasingly subjective, relying less on objective measures, coinciding with faculty concerns about declining student preparedness for college-level work. This "black box" approach, driven by expanded institutional discretion, demands greater transparency and accountability from universities regarding their decision-making and academic outcomes, some experts say.
In the four years since Julie Chen became chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Lowell, the school has seen increases in enrollment, retention, six-year graduation rates, and philanthropy. A mechanical engineering professor and respected researcher, Chen has been affiliated with UMass Lowell for nearly three decades.
Less than three years into Chen’s chancellorship, UMass Lowell received Carnegie Research 1 classification, and its research franchise surpassed $120 million in annual research and development spending. Chen also has multiple firsts as an administrator. She is the first Asian American to lead UMass Lowell and the first openly LGBTQ+ person to be a chancellor in the UMass System.
Course availability has long been a barrier to college completion, forcing some students to delay graduation when required classes aren’t offered—or even transfer elsewhere to stay on track.
In response, eHBCU, a group of six Historically Black Colleges and Universities launched last year, recently announced a new course-sharing partnership that allows students to remain enrolled at their home institution while accessing courses offered at other participating HBCUs.
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