Seventeen years ago, the Lumina Foundation set out to try to increase the proportion of workers-age adults with university certificates to 38% to 60% from 2025.
It did not achieve this goal, although only a few percentage points. Today, 55% of individuals between the ages of 25 and 64 have a college degree or short-term certificate, Lumina CEO Jamie Merisotis called it “one of the most important but least recognized success stories of the past decade and a half.”
But Lumina’s leaders said in a Monday press conference that times have changed and when setting new goals for the next 15 years, they choose not only to focus on university achievements, but to ensure people’s bachelor’s degree helps them succeed and thrive in their careers.
That’s why the foundation’s new goal aims to increase the number of adults in the labor force who have a “credential of value”—meaning they have earned a college credential and now make an income at least 15 percent more than the national average for high school graduates—to 75 percent by 2040. That number lines up with various labor projects, such as a Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce report, released earlier this year, that anticipated that 72 percent of jobs will require higher education or training in 2031.
Lumina’s leaders decided to focus on income to a large extent, due to Americans’ confidence in the value of higher education. Polls conducted by Gallup and Lumina show that the main reason people think that degrees are not worth going to college is because they don’t believe that higher education can make people successful in their workforce well.
“Our view is that we have to do more to change the workforce system of higher education to meet talent needs to expand economic prosperity for individuals, families and communities,” Merisotis said. “Today, we must ensure that higher education literally serves more people.”
Currently, only 44.1% of the U.S. workforce (including military members and those looking for a job) currently have a college degree or certificate and earns at least 15% of the income than the workforce with only a high school diploma, according to the Foundation’s analysis of census data. Native Americans, Hispanics and Blacks are significantly slower, while whites and Asians are faster.
The foundation sets out four pillars of program priorities to achieve the 75% goal: Continue to expand university learning opportunities, promote student success and retention, redesign university and workforce preparation to better support today’s students and ensure that the certificates students receive are actually rewarded.
Wil Del Pilar, senior vice president of Education Equity nonprofit Edtrust, praised the shifting of its focus to the university’s value foundation and provided a definition for valuable certificates.
“The ROI works are under severe scrutiny nationwide,” he said. “Including a metric that measures results – taking income measures as a result, making people think about ROI in higher education, which I think is a much-needed data point” – although he notes that earning 15% more than high school graduates than high school graduates, who made an average of $38,000 in 2023, seems to be “a low bar.”
(Courtney Brown, vice president of program at Lumina Impact and program, said in a media briefing that the 15% figure was negotiated with multiple labor economists.)
Shawn Vanderziel, president of the National Association of Colleges and Employers, said Lumina’s requirement to seek to improve value qualifications will also have a successful role not only for graduates, but also for employers seeking to recruit talents they can trust. Send to Internal Advanced EDhe called the program a “value goal” and a “win-win” for graduates and employers.
He is making an email statement to Internal advanced ED. “With Lumina’s help, I hope we can expand the speed at which educational institutions can grow to meet the changing needs of employers and their focus on skills-based recruitment.”
Charles Ansell, vice president of research, policy and advocacy at Full American University, noted that while he appreciates the foundation’s focus on the value of certificates, he is also glad Lumina has not completely shifted its focus away from achieving achievements.
“College achievement remains the best predictor of higher wage outcomes,” he said. “If your full-time graduation rate hovers in the community college space in the 20s, it’s hard to get economic liquidity. It’s still very important to put the achievement goal itself first without ignoring the situation where the university completes.”
As for whether the 75% goal can be achieved? Ansel believes that this is irrelevant because it is just something that needs to make the country’s economic and democratic health.
“We should never lie about what we need to do,” he said. “I don’t think it’s realistic, it’s what we need to do.”
