Special Lumina Foundation Report: A Stronger Nation Through Higher Education

A special report for higher education was recently released from the Lumina Foundation for Education. The report lays out the Foundation's "big goal" for education and is chock-full of data and provides links to other sites with even more data.

The "big goal" is to increase the percentage of Americans with high-quality degrees and credentials from 39 percent to 60 percent by the year 2025." The report describes the national problem and presents state-by-state data and profiles to drive it home. The report also provides state by state policy briefs.

View the report online.

Community College Report of Student Engagement Released

This year’s report of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) focuses on two critical, interrelated elements of engagement—high expectations and high support, making the case that students do best when expectations are high and they receive support that helps them achieve at high levels.

To illustrate these points, the report describes key findings from the survey, offers many examples of how colleges are using their results to target improvements, including institutions with a commitment to service-learning.

"High expectations are an essential condition for student success. Simply put, no one rises to low expectations. But establishing high expectations is no simple matter. It requires more than just words, more than telling students that the community college holds high expectations for them. It also requires the establishment of policies and practices — and in turn, patterns of faculty, staff, and student actions — that reinforce those words in everyday practice. High expectations have to be experienced, not simply heard."

Read the entire report here.

Also read the Executive Summary "High Expectations and High Support: Essential Elements of Engagement."