Lumina Foundation is committed to increasing the proportion of Americans with high-quality degrees, certificates and other credentials to 60 percent by 2025.
For the Rodriguez family, higher education has already become a symbol of upward mobility, a life-altering path to meaningful careers and the sort of financial stability that Margarita and Rafael have never known. Now these parents worry for their bright, hardworking daughters—and how last year's ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court on race-conscious admissions will shape their futures.
Some of the biggest higher education issues in 2023—college access, leadership turnover, pressures on the business model, among others—will continue to play out in the new year. Here are five trends that experts say will define the coming months ahead for students, families, and education leaders.
As a teenager, "Fernanda" dreamed that college would mirror what she saw in movies. She wanted to attend a big university—one with name recognition—and live in a dormitory. She achieved that dream in 2015 when she entered Pennsylvania State University. But because she is undocumented, the experience came with a hefty price tag. At least 18 states have passed legislation allowing some undocumented immigrants to access state financial aid, which many citizens rely on to pay for college. Pennsylvania, however, is not one of them.
Since the time she was in elementary school, Isabella Cross has dreamed of going to an Ivy League college to become an engineer. But in Crossville, her "little no-name town" in East Tennessee, as she describes it, selective universities and colleges rarely came to recruit. That may be changing. As top colleges try to create a diverse campus with students from all walks of life, more are traveling to places they've previously neglected: rural communities.
Nikki Murray and Krystal Fancher Smith, both lifelong Vernon residents, represent the kind of students that community colleges in Texas and across the country have struggled to keep. The two entered Vernon College young, wide-eyed, and enticed by higher education’s promise to pave a path to a better life. But Murray and Smith grew and changed, their plans shifted with them and, for different reasons, the idea of college lost its luster. Vernon College wants them to reconsider.
The 2024-25 academic year is expected to be more affordable as students get more federal support. Lawmakers seem on track to maintain the maximum Pell grant value of $7,395 and a record number of students are expected to be eligible for that funding. But the possibility of a turbulent rollout of the new Free Application for Federal Student Aid could reduce the number of students taking advantage of it. And students will have only a few months to commit to a school by the universally recognized May 1 decision day, leaving low-income students rushing to calculate whether they can afford to attend college.
