The institution’s obligation ends at placement. Success is measured in certification rates and employment numbers.

That model is no longer sufficient. Not because teacher preparation is unimportant���it is���but because the challenges facing American public education have outgrown what preparation alone can address.

Schools are not struggling primarily because educators are underprepared. They are struggling because the systems in which educators work were not designed for the demands now placed upon them. Fixing the pipeline does not fix the architecture.

Higher education leaders have an opportunity���and arguably an obligation���to respond. The question is whether colleges of education will expand their institutional role to meet this moment, or continue operating at a distance from the systems they were built to serve.

New types of teamwork

Most are organized around programs: a student teaching placement, a professional development contract, a research agreement. These are valuable. They are also insufficient for the scale of redesign that school systems now require.

Consider what a more expansive partnership looks like. Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation���and the housed within it���and Albuquerque Public Schools are engaged in work that begins not with a program, but with a question:

Why do we continue to organize schools as if a single adult, working in isolation, is the appropriate unit of teaching and learning?

Answering it requires rethinking how time is scheduled, how space is used, how educators are deployed, and how schools distribute responsibility for student outcomes.

Universities are positioned to support this kind of structural work, not because they hold the answers, but because they can bring research capacity, cross-sector perspective, and the ability to hold complexity over time in ways that overburdened district administrations often cannot. The key is proximity.

Arizona State’s approach places the university inside the work of school redesign, not above it. Consultants deliver and depart. Co-designers stay, adapt, and share accountability for outcomes.

That distinction separates genuine institutional partnership from transactional service.

Colleges of education must co-own outcomes

Higher education leaders understand infrastructure. It is the broadband that enables everything else, the research computing cluster that powers multiple colleges, the advising system that supports student success institution-wide.

Infrastructure is not glamorous. But when it fails, everything built on top of it fails too.

Colleges of education should understand themselves as infrastructure for the educator workforce in precisely this sense���something more expansive than preparing individuals for entry into the profession.

It means contributing to the conditions under which educators can develop, collaborate, and sustain high-quality practice across a career. It means producing research with school systems rather than about them.

It means convening across sectors to address problems no single institution can solve. And it means pushing, with rigor and candor, on the structures and practices that are not working.

This is a co-ownership model. As David Labaree has observed, colleges of education have historically kept their distance from K12���studying outcomes, reporting on them, preparing the people who produce them, but rarely owning them alongside the schools where they occur.

That distance is no longer defensible. If the educator workforce is in crisis���and by most indicators, it is���then institutions that prepare, study, and convene around that workforce have a responsibility that extends beyond their traditional functions.

Four key investments

Repositioning a college of education as workforce infrastructure requires investment in four areas:

1. Sustained presence over episodic engagement. Substantive partnerships are built on ongoing relationships, shared data, and embedded roles, not grant cycles and discrete deliverables.
2. Preparation programs that reflect the environments graduates will actually inhabit. If the profession is moving toward team-based staffing models���where educators share responsibility for student cohorts and specialize by role���preparation should not continue to train candidates exclusively as autonomous generalists. Aligning preparation with redesigned schools is not just pedagogically sound, but it is a competitive institutional advantage in attracting district partners, philanthropic investment, and policy support.
3. Research designed for use. The traditional hierarchy���university produces knowledge, districts consume it���does not serve system redesign. Colleges of education that want a meaningful role in workforce transformation need networks, practitioner-researcher partnerships, and evaluation frameworks built around shared learning.
4. Convening as a core institutional function. Grand challenges in education cannot be addressed by any single institution. Colleges of education are well-positioned as conveners, bringing together district leaders, policymakers, preparation programs, and community organizations. This function is underutilized. For institutions seeking to expand their public purpose, it represents a significant strategic opportunity.

We prepare teachers?

Colleges of education face enrollment pressures and questions about their value proposition that are not going away. The traditional answer���we prepare teachers���is insufficient as a standalone identity when alternative pathways and employer-based preparation continue to expand.

The educator workforce shortage is a structural problem, not a supply problem. The conditions of teaching���professional isolation, flat career trajectories, inadequate support���drive attrition and suppress entry.

Adding more teachers to a system that consumes them is not a solution. Changing the system is. That is work that higher education, at its best, is built to support.

The question is whether colleges of education are willing to become part of the infrastructure required to do it.

The image above was created by AI.

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A four���time alumna of William Woods, Wisdom returns to her alma mater after a nine���year run as superintendent of the New Bloomfield School District, a Missouri K12 system she worked in for over two decades.

At a time when small, private institutions to prove relevance, retain talent and stabilize enrollment, Wisdom steps in��with a veteran’s understanding of the region’s student pipeline.

���I���ve lived every part of the education system,��� Wisdom says. “From students arriving at age three to watching them graduate and move on. That perspective matters right now.���

Her ties to William Woods run deeper than her degrees. While working at New Bloomfield, she sat on previous president search committees, advised Greek life and has served as an adjunct faculty member since 2017. Her family���s lifelong ties to the university���s nationally recognized equestrian program stretch back decades.

But her appointment is less a homecoming than a calculated leap. Moves from K12 superintendencies into higher education presidencies are rare, in part because the governance models differ so sharply. Wisdom sees the opposite.

Your next read:��These leadership qualities make superintendents more hirable

���In a small district, you���re the CFO. You���re HR. You���re communications,��� she says. ���You���re accountable for results across the entire organization. That background translates more than people think.���

That operational mindset will shape her early agenda. Wisdom says her first months will emphasize listening and long���term planning, particularly around faculty and student retention.

“The No. 1 thing that impacts student learning is quality staff in front of them,” Wisdom says of the similarities between higher ed and K12. “Retention is definitely something that I’m looking at as well.

Just as critical is what happens before students arrive on campus. Wisdom believes higher education has underutilized partnerships with K12 systems, leaving gaps in alignment and preparation.

Deeper collaboration could expose high school students to academic disciplines, expectations and career pathways earlier.

���We all want productive citizens,��� she says. ���But we don���t always work together toward that goal.���

Wisdom���s K12 experience also informs her view of higher education���s increasing budgetary and political pressures. At New Bloomfield, Wisdom gained recognition for budgeting and facility improvements.

���K12 has lived under mandates and public pressure for years,��� she says. ���The challenges are different, but the accountability feels very similar.���

What��will distinguish her presidency is scale, Wisdom believes. As a teacher, she influenced dozens of students; as a superintendent, entire communities. As a president, she now sees the opportunity to shape outcomes far beyond a single region.

“When you are a university president, you are impacting things nationally and globally,” she says. ���The chance to make decisions that matter at a much broader level.���

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Last week, the University of Wisconsin reduced credit bachelor’s degree programs below the standard 120-credit threshold.

The Higher Learning Commission, the University of Wisconsin’s accreditor, for reduced-credit programs from institutions in 19 states.

Some private colleges accredited by the Higher Learning Commission moved quickly. This spring, and began offering programs across an array of career-oriented fields, including cybersecurity, social work, digital marketing, exercise science and sports management.

Private and public colleges in Massachusetts can now pilot three-year degrees, by the Massachusetts Board of Education.

Your next read:��

���In Massachusetts, we have industries that need talent and students eager to grow their education and careers,��� said Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll. ���I���m grateful to the Board of Higher Education for inviting campuses to innovate in a way that will benefit students, faculty, employers and our economy.���

The New England Commission of Higher Education, a primary accreditor, and interest from faculty, leadership and students in piloting programs.

Eight North Dakota colleges are testing three-year career and technical education programs, reports.

What’s driving the 3-year degree momentum?

Since 2022, a collective of small, regional public and private institutions has tinkered with reduced-credit bachelor’s degrees, piloting programs among small cohorts. The “College-in-3 Exchange” aimed to deliver more efficient, affordable education for a high-demand workforce.

“A three-year degree, like other innovations, has unknowns and risks,” Madeleine F. Green, executive director of the College-in-3 Exchange,. “But the status quo carries its own risks���students burdened by debt, employers struggling to fill positions, and an institution whose legitimacy is fraying because it has resisted asking hard questions about its own product.

In Utah, College-in-3 members Ensign College and BYU-Idaho are among the first accredited schools to offer a three-year bachelor’s degree online. Starting this fall, Ensign will be the first institution in the nation to require 90 to 96 credits for all of its Bachelor of Applied Science degrees.

The Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities accredits both institutions. Former commission president��Sonny Ramaswamy of innovations to the bachelor’s degree.

Other accreditors are weighing in as well. The University of Lynchburg in Virginia is the first institution accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges to pilot a reduced-credit program.

���This might attract a different type of student that might not otherwise be able to afford��� a traditional four-year program, Stephen Smith, interim associate vice president of academic and strategic operations at Lynchburg,

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the D.C.-based think tank Brookings found that inflation���adjusted net prices���the amount students actually pay after grants and scholarships���have dropped for virtually all students over the past five to 10 years across public and private institutions.

“While there may still be room to improve affordability, if anything the evidence suggests that college has, for the most part, become more affordable in the last decade,” writes Phillip Levine, Brookings economist and the report’s author.

Who is paying lower college costs?

Families earning about $40,000 annually have seen the most substantial reductions in inflation-adjusted tuition across institution types.

In the 2025-26 academic year, the nation’s most well-endowed private institutions charged around $5,000 per year, a whopping 28.1% decrease from six years ago. By covering the bulk of tuition, universities reduce students��� remaining costs to an amount they can earn through part-time work, without requiring any financial help from their families, Levine writes.

The net price for low-income students continued to drop anywhere from 12.7% to 16.8% across less wealthy private colleges and public colleges, including state flagships.

Middle-income families���those earning $85,000 to $140,000���also experienced double-digit declines in net prices across all private institution types.

The more endowed an institution, the more significant the net price drop. For example, since 2015, students from families earning $85,000 a year saw 42.6% reduction in��prices at highly selective, private institutions.

The only group seeing recent increases is high���income families at highly endowed private colleges. Even so, their costs remain lower than in the late 2010s.

Despite the increased affordability for lower-income students, the wealthy “elite” private institutions of students from higher-income households, Levine noted.

The misperception gap

Institutions have committed to spending more on need-based financial aid for students. The latest NACUBO report on endowment spending found were directed toward financial aid.

As the amount families pay has fallen,��college sticker prices .�� Artificially high tuition prices meant at some schools have from applying.

Meanwhile, as housing and healthcare expenses continue to rise, families often assume that college costs must be doing the same.

“These findings should not be read as minimizing the financial strain many families experience but rather as evidence that those strains are not being driven by rising college net prices,” Levine concluded.

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The 2025 Survey of Community College Outcomes tracked 189 colleges across 10 states and applied a broader definition of student success than the standard federal graduation rate. The result: a 49.8% success rate���nearly 16 percentage points higher than the 33.8% traditional rate for the same schools.

The challenge with measuring community colleges

The federal graduation rate only counts first-time, full-time students who enrolled in the fall. That means part-time students, working adults and students who transferred in with prior credits don’t make the cut���even though they represent a huge share of who community colleges actually serve.

The metric also leaves out students who transfer to a four-year school before earning a degree, even when transfer was the goal. “Community colleges play a critical role in our workforce development system by providing education and programming that enable students and workers to reach their full economic potential,” the report notes. Yet traditional measures haven’t reflected that role.

What the Richmond Fed community college success rate counts instead

The Richmond Fed Success Rate tracks students over four years and casts a wider net. A student counts as successful if they:

• earned a degree or certificate
• completed a workforce credential or industry certification
• transferred to a four-year school
• stayed enrolled, completed at least 30 credit hours, and kept a 2.0 GPA or better

That last category���persistence���recognizes that for many students, staying on track is itself a meaningful outcome worth recognizing.

Student success varies by age and enrollment

Full-time community college students succeed at a rate of 56.6%, compared to 43.6% for part-time students. Associate degree completion drives much of that gap.

Age tells an interesting story too. Students under 18���mostly high schoolers earning college credit early���had the highest success rate at 61.2%.

Older community college students had the lowest success rate, but the report suggests that reflects different goals and life circumstances. “Adult learners are more likely to be employed full-time or have caregiving responsibilities compared to recent high school graduates,” the report explains. They are also more likely to pursue shorter-term credentials than two- or four-year degrees.

Guidance for campus leaders

The offers a few clear signals for those managing community colleges:

• Advocate for broader measures when reporting outcomes to boards or state agencies. Don’t judge your school by graduation rates alone. The traditional metric undercounts your students and your impact.
• Design around your adult learners. Flexible scheduling and short-term credentialing pathways directly affect whether working adults can succeed.
• Track non-credit workforce outcomes. Third-party providers often do not report those credentials, which means your true success rate is probably higher than current metrics show.

The Richmond Fed will release a full methodology in March 2026 and plans to publish additional findings throughout the year. For now, the takeaway is clear: community colleges are doing more than the numbers show���they just need better numbers.

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Americans who have low confidence in higher education cite the cost, insufficient career prep and politicization on campus, according to report by Lumina Foundation and Gallup.

However, large majorities of students believe that their degrees will lead to jobs, that they can express themselves freely on campus and that faculty support diverse viewpoints.

Most students say their investment in higher ed is worthwhile despite rising���”even unfair”���tuition costs, the report says. More than half of the students surveyed contend that four-year universities do not charge fair prices, while 25% say the same of two-year colleges.

The report also tracks the public’s declining positivity over the last decade, along with a more recent rebound. In 2015, 57% of Americans had faith in higher education, compared to just over a third in 2024. But last year, more than four in 10 expressed confidence.

Here are five key figures from the survey:

1. Between 64% and 74% of Democratic, Republican and independent students say all or most of their professors encourage students to share their views.
2. Just 2% of all college students, including 3% of Republicans, feel they don���t belong on their campus due to their political views.
3. Roughly nine in 10 college students are confident that their coursework is teaching them career-relevant skills and that their degree will help them find a job.
4. About nine in 10 bachelor���s (93%) and associate degree students (89%) believe that the investment they are making in college is worth it, and about three-quarters of students and college graduates agree that their degree is or has been worth the cost.
5. Three-quarters of college graduates say their degree has been ���critical��� or ���important��� to their career success, and most recent bachelor���s (80%) and associate degree (62%) graduates secured a good job within one year of graduation.

Challenges to college value

The report warned that, despite students’ overall optimism, cost remains a barrier to some student seeking the benefits of a degree and that the small groups who lack a sense of campus belonging are at risk of dropping out.

The researchers also pointed out that one in five graduates does not land a good job within a year of graduation.

“These deeply personal, negative experiences may carry outsized influence in conversations these graduates have with friends, family and colleagues about the benefits of college���even if they do not represent the most likely outcome,” the report concludes.

“Colleges and universities can strengthen public confidence by clearly communicating graduates��� success stories while continuing to address student concerns about free expression, belonging and the value of their educational investment.”

Gallup and Lumina also released a more in-depth report on the of college degrees.

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“Forward-looking institutions are already building for the future; actively cultivating dual enrollment pipelines, strengthening adult learner pathways and investing in applied programs that align with labor market demand.”

Adult learners changing the game

Enrollment among adult learners aged 25 and older grew by 10% from 2023 to 2024. These gains are partially due to the number of re-enrolled students with some-college but no-credentials surpassing one million.

Meanwhile, the traditional college-age population appeared to flatten.

This shift toward adult learners and lifelong education correlated with a 3% enrollment increase in the number of students who earned non-degree certificates and other short-term credentials from 2023 to 2024.

Short-term credentials provide students with flexible learning opportunities that can quickly lead to employment. These credentials will also be instrumental in upskilling mid-career professionals as AI reshapes labor market needs, the report predicts.

“The future labor market will reward continuous skill��development, not static credentials. The opportunity is not only to create entry points for displaced workers but also to design stackable credential pathways that bridge short-term training with long-term degree attainment.”

Durable academic programs for tomorrow

The economy is expected to add 5.2 million jobs over the next decade, concentrated in health care, technology and business. Program enrollment in those fields grew the most from 2023 to 2024, reflecting student demand for durable career outcomes.

At the same time, enrollment in the social sciences and humanities dropped by 3% and 8%, respectively.

Persistence through semesters played a key role in determining year-over-year program enrollment. Engineering, mathematics, and biomedical sciences scored persistence rates of 90% or above in 2023. On the other hand, programs in philosophy, cultural and gender studies, history and foreign languages saw rates drop from 2018 to 2023.

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Through the end of January, 38.6% of the high school class of 2026 has completed a FAFSA form, according to the National College Attainment Network’s .

The over 1.5 million students who have completed a FAFSA represent a seismic 51.9% increase over last year’s class and 9.7% change compared to the class of 2023, the last cohort to have received the FAFSA by the traditional Oct. 1 opening.

The class of 2026 is the first in the last three years to have received the form��by Oct. 1���now a government mandate.

More on higher ed: New research dismantles the narrative that college isn���t worth the cost

Other highlights from the latest data include:

• 66% increase in seniors completing FAFSA from low-income high schools
• 63% increase in seniors completing FAFSA from high-minority high schools
• in students’ eligibility for the maximum Pell Grant over the 2023-24 pre-FAFSA simplification cycle

���We are finally seeing the promise of a better and simpler FAFSA made real,������said Kim Cook, CEO of the National College Attainment Network.

The potential rise in Pell-eligible students develops amid considerable enrollment growth from low-income students.

found that students hailing from lower-income ZIP codes enrolled at higher rates than other students this past fall. This trend held among highly selective four-year institutions.

Similarly, first-year Hispanic and Black student enrollment across state flagships since affirmative action ended. However, student enrollment at elite institutions like Stanford and the University of Chicago fell.

With five months left in the application cycle, the class of 2026 is on track to break the record for the percentage of seniors submitting the form. The class of 2018 set the record at 54.5%.

���This year���s smoother process is helping to rebuild���trust���in the financial aid system���with���the students and families that���NCAN���member organizations���serve every day, ensuring that more students will gain access to the Pell Grants that help make postsecondary education more���affordable,” Cook said.

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The biggest drops occurred at , a group that includes Stanford University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago. However, Black first-year student enrollment has soared at state flagships such as Louisiana State University and the University of Mississippi, according to “” report from the nonprofit Class Action.

Hispanic enrollment jumped by more than a third at the University of Tennessee and the University of South Carolina, noted the report, which compares first-time enrollments of more than three million freshmen in 2022 and 2023 to 2024 at over 3,000 institutions.

These shifts reflect a “cascade effect” after the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College case, also known as “SFFA.” High-achieving students of color who might have been accepted by elite schools prior to the decision enrolled in less selective colleges and universities after the ruling.

Here are some other findings from the Class Action report:

• Total enrollment and Black enrollment declined at historically Black colleges and universities.
• Hispanic enrollment increased at more selective institutions that did practice legacy preferences and declined at those that did.
• The number and share of white and Asian American freshmen remained flat, although there was a slight uptick for Asian American first-year students at Ivy Plus schools.
• There was a slight shift in Black freshman enrollment toward institutions with lower graduation rates and expected earnings after college.

The numbers prove that college admissions were never ���race-based,��� the report contends.

“College admissions and enrollment occur within a complex ecosystem where the actions and decisions of admissions officers, financial aid officers, and students themselves shape and are shaped by each other,” the report concludes.��

Class Action maintains a post-affirmative action on its website. Users can view enrollment by race and gender at more than 3,000 institutions.

Leadership shifts:��More superintendents are on the move as hiring surges��

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The Department of Education earnings indicator that alerts applying first-year undergraduates as to which institutions graduates earn less than those with only a high school diploma.

Colleges and universities that fail to meet the threshold will be accompanied by a “low earnings” disclosure in the FAFSA Submission Summary, which is generated once students signal interest in attending a specific institution.

The new tool uses publicly available data from the department’s , which allows users to track median earnings of undergraduates 10 years after enrolling. Students and families can also compare outcomes across different institutions.

The earnings indicator compared working graduates’ salaries four years after completing a credential from a select institution during the 2014���15 and 2015���16 academic years.��It was then assessed against the median high school salaries in their state or nationally.

���Not only will this new FAFSA feature make public earnings data more accessible, but it will empower prospective students to make data-driven decisions before they are saddled with debt,” U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement.

More than 2% of today’s undergraduate students attend an institution where median earnings from graduates are less than a high school completer, according to . These institutions receive more than $2 billion in federal student aid.

About 23%, or over 1,300 institutions, are now flagged for lower earnings, according to earnings data submitted by .

However, 88% of the flagged programs are for-profit institutions, the majority of which award certificates rather than degrees, by James Murphy, a senior fellow at , a nonprofit dedicated to higher education reform.

More on student outcomes: Why district leaders need better postsecondary outcomes data

Additionally, no public four-year institution was identified as “lower earnings,” while only 4% of community colleges were.

“It���s good that the Department of Education is calling out institutions of higher education that are wasting our tax dollars, but it should be much clearer on which institutions are the main problem,” Murphy wrote.

The new earnings indicator aligns with another earnings outcome accountability measure spearheaded by the Trump administration.

Beginning next summer, the “Do No Harm” framework, passed by Congress in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, will revoke an academic program’s eligibility for federal financial loans if student earnings fail to surpass those of a control group in at least two of the three assessed years.

The control group will comprise learners with less esteemed credentials. For example, a graduate program’s reported earnings will be compared to a similar group of bachelor’s degree holders.

Similarly, the benchmark for undergraduate degree programs is equal to the median earnings of 25- to 34-year-olds in the same state with only a high school diploma.

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