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.
Apprenticeships are experiencing an upward trend in the United States, with many colleges and universities reimagining their purpose and audience.
In this interview, education reporters discuss the growth of registered apprenticeships, visiting factories in upstate New York and embedding themselves with learners on the job in South Carolina. What emerged is a clearer picture of the American apprenticeship, distinct from decades-old European models, and the ways higher ed institutions are working to integrate these pathways into careers.
Over the past 18 months, the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to research, canceling grants, clawing back funds, and slow-walking the release of awards so that the clock may run out on the fiscal year before already-approved projects see a dime. Officials tried to cap government payments to colleges for infrastructure like facilities and lab equipment, but a court order blocked them. Staffing in federal agencies has been decimated.
While Congress and the courts have curtailed some of the administration’s ambitions, the changes amount to the most far-reaching overhaul of research since World War II, eroding the bedrock alliance between higher education and the federal government and shaking the foundation of research-intensive institutions like the University of Colorado at Boulder.
At the height of the pandemic, many colleges and universities stopped requiring applicants to submit standardized test scores. The so-called test-optional movement took hold, and the outsize role of the SAT and ACT in admissions was challenged as never before. Critics of the tests have long argued that they favor wealthy students and welcomed this news. But a backlash has ensued recently, and some high-profile universities have reinstated testing requirements, citing concerns about college readiness.
Now, the return-to-testing movement is getting traction in what might seem an unlikely place: The University of California system. What’s driving this push to reinstate testing requirements? And how do testing skeptics feel about the shifting national mood?
Texas spent billions recruiting scientists from around the world to turn the state into a cancer-research powerhouse. Today, nearly six months after Gov. Greg Abbott restricted public institutions' use of the H-1B visa program, cancer advocates and immigration attorneys warn the policy could undercut that strategy.
Across Texas, 44 public universities, health centers, and system offices reported sponsoring 3,332 H-1B workers to the Texas Workforce Commission. Lore Gruenbaum, chief scientific officer and senior vice president of research at Blood Cancer United, says the types of new restrictions being imposed send "a chilling message that foreign-born researchers are less welcome" at a time when institutions already face difficulty recruiting and retaining young scientists.
The bachelor’s degree has been one of the most successful social inventions in modern history. For generations, we’ve thought about the bachelor’s degree as a finished product. Some higher education advocates and labor experts say that’s the wrong way to consider it today, and certainly going forward.
The most significant mistake higher education makes about the undergraduate degree is assuming it ends when students graduate. In an era of accelerating technological and workforce change, it may be better understood as the foundation for continually developing human capability.
That is the message to emerge from the 2026 National Association of College and University Business Officers annual meeting earlier this week, which comes amid the flurry of federal policy changes the Trump administration has advanced over the last 18 months. While many of those changes—which some critics describe as a federal assault on higher education—will affect institutional bottom lines, speakers urged attendees to act based on reality, not political rhetoric.
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