Lumina Fact Sheet

Lumina has defined two high-level imperatives necessary for reaching Goal 2025. While distinct, these imperatives are interrelated and mutually supportive.

The first — Mobilizing to Reach Goal 2025 — is to mobilize action at the local, state and national levels and in higher education systems and institutions throughout the nation. To reach the goal, thousands of educators (including faculty and administrators), elected officials, community leaders, business leaders and other citizens must understand and accept as their own the need to increase attainment. Effective mobilization also depends on these individuals and groups being equipped with the tools and approaches they need to act.

Lumina’s mobilization work is organized around the creation of a social movement to increase attainment, along with approaches targeted to specific groups that must act if the goal is to be reached. Those groups, in addition to entities within higher education, include: employers, metropolitan areas and regions, and individuals and organizations involved with state and federal policy.

Lumina’s second strategic imperative — Designing a 21st Century Higher Education System — is to develop specific approaches to create the fundamental change needed in higher education to reach the attainment goal. This change is really quite simple, but far-reaching in its ramifications. It is that the U.S. move from a system based on time to one based on learning.

As a consequence of this shift, there are specific structures within the U.S. higher education system — particularly finance and credentialing models — that need to be changed for attainment to increase to the levels required to reach the goal. Through collaboration with its growing number of partner organizations and individuals, Lumina will work to develop new models and to implement them throughout the higher education system.