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.
Today, roughly 200 community colleges across 24 states offer bachelor’s degree programs, challenging the notion that community colleges are exclusively two-year institutions.
As these programs expand, they are thrusting community colleges into a new role. While they have traditionally been viewed as starting points for students who transfer to four-year bachelor’s degree-granting institutions, some community colleges are now becoming transfer destinations themselves.
Since 2024, more than 1,200 Colorado students have graduated high school with a seal demonstrating their climate awareness. Now, the model is spreading to other states.
Proponents of the seal argue that young people must understand and combat climate change without waiting for political leaders to reach consensus on how it should be taught in schools. They also hope the endorsement will connect students to a rapidly expanding green workforce, preparing them to work on solar grids and climate-resilient farms or in water resource management and urban heat mitigation. And, as climate change begins to alter almost every aspect of human life, the seal could offer anxious teenagers a sense of agency and ability to make some difference.
In many ways, Workforce Pell represents a triumph for the higher education community. But as many institutions encounter a maze of state and federal approvals, data requirements they can’t yet meet, and hour thresholds that disqualify programs that plainly work, some schools may quietly conclude that the effort isn’t worth it. Instead of using Workforce Pell as a catalyst to build new job-aligned programs, they won’t build those programs at all. In other words, a policy designed to expand access could, through sheer administrative friction, end up narrowing it.
The good news is that it’s early enough to fix this problem, says Lisa Larson of the Education Design Lab in this perspective piece.
When Carnegie Mellon University opens its new campus in Miami, it will neighbor the art galleries and bars of the city’s up-and-coming Wynwood neighborhood—and, just blocks away, the Miami outpost of Northeastern University.
What’s sending some colleges south? In Florida, they find a growing population, a booming tech economy, and a crop of local donors willing to put millions—or billions—of dollars toward the expansion efforts. In a sector preoccupied with financial precarity, the expansions serve as a reminder that resource-rich universities are looking to pounce on opportunity wherever they can find it.
A college can no longer count on being the only voice explaining its value. Prospective students can find firsthand student perspectives and check public data on cost and outcomes. The question for colleges is no longer simply what they say about themselves, but whether that account holds up when families look elsewhere.
Schools that once controlled their narratives now compete with thousands of data points they didn’t create and can’t manage. Institutions that earn trust in this environment will show what they deliver and build systems that prove it.
Every institution today is navigating a landscape shaped by changing student expectations, financial pressures, demographic shifts, and rapid technological advancement. Responding effectively requires more than adopting new tools—it demands strong institutional foundations that create the capacity to innovate, improve the student experience, and adapt with confidence.
That reality is reshaping the role of the chief information officer.
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