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.
Conspiracy theories have played a role in American culture and politics for decades. In a course called “Conspiracy Rhetoric: Power, Politics, and Pop Culture” at Bates College, students closely examine what propels those theories and how they amass influence.
As part of their studies, students seek to understand how some people—sometimes people they love—can fall under the thrall of conspiratorial thinking. While students learn what to say to a true-believing friend or relative, the course also teaches them how to identify, debunk, and counter disinformation.
Teaching social work in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Cassandra Simon often assigns readings that describe how the families her students might one day serve have been impacted by more than a century of housing, employment, and education discrimination. The associate professor encourages her students to engage in spirited discussions about race, even assigning a project in which they advocate for or against a social-justice issue.
But things are changing. Conservative lawmakers say professors are indoctrinating students with liberal ideas. Meanwhile, in a series of lawsuits, professors argue vaguely worded laws violate their First Amendment rights.
Workforce training played the quiet middle child during this year’s regular legislative session. While louder, more polarizing issues took the spotlight, Texas lawmakers also passed landmark bills that will reshape how students prepare for life after high school.
The workforce legislation that reached the governor’s desk this session will open new pathways for high school students to access career training, grow apprenticeship programs, and lay the groundwork to build a homegrown nuclear energy workforce. The state’s technical colleges could also see a long-awaited boost to expand their footprint.
With more than 41 million adults in the United States holding some college credit but no degree, institutions are under increasing pressure to implement effective strategies for adult learner enrollment and retention that facilitate degree completion. But re-engaging these individuals takes more than outreach—it requires coordinated partnerships that support learners from enrollment through graduation.
In this interview, Malik Brown of Graduate Philadelphia shares insight into the complexity of the some college, no credential population, their reasons for stopping out, and what institutional leaders can do to reduce friction and build sustainable pathways to completion.
TikTok videos, some with tens of thousands of views, are claiming that borrowers can have all their student loans erased by following a few simple steps. “I just got approved today, and I don’t really know what approved means,” one TikToker says in a video posted in April. She explains that she disputed the line on her credit report that referred to her student debt and had it removed from the credit report. “Does that mean I’m not going to have to make payments?” she says.
Since its creation in 1965, the federal TRIO program has helped millions of students go to and stay in college. Specifically, programming efforts provide services to support students from low-income backgrounds, first-generation college students, and students with disabilities as they seek a college education.
But that could change. In Trump’s budget proposal, the administration calls TRIO “a relic of the past” and wants to push responsibility for college recruitment and retention to colleges and universities. College-access advocates, meanwhile, say gutting TRIO programs will hurt students who are already less likely to pursue higher education.
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