We sat down with Jamie Merisotis, president and CEO of Lumina Foundation, for a return visit to the Innovating Together Podcast. In this latest installment of the Weekly Wisdom Series, he discussed Lumina’s new goal for a successful labor force, the value proposition of higher education, the importance of perceived equity, and the urgency for higher ed reform.
College Degrees as Benchmarks of Success
For those unfamiliar with Lumina’s mission, the foundation partners with education and business leaders, civil rights organizations, policymakers, and others who want to reimagine how and where learning occurs. In 2008, Lumina set a goal that by 2025, 60% of working-age adults would earn a degree or credential beyond high school. The projection wasn’t far off. Thanks in part to Lumina’s efforts, post-secondary attainment in the U.S. increased from 38% to 55%, which President Merisotis argued may be among the biggest social change successes of the 21st century to date.
The foundation announced its next goal this past March. By 2040, 75% of U.S. working-age adults will hold a college degree or workforce credential that leads to economic prosperity. This aspiration comes during a challenging moment when higher ed faces rising skepticism about the value of college, the evolving demands for a well-prepared workforce, a new administration with new expectations, the complexity of AI, and uncertainty about which credentials will deliver value.
President Merisotis explained that the benchmark of attainment is completing a degree or credentials that allow people to be successful in their work. Success, he explained, means pay raises, the ability to get jobs in new fields, and becoming better citizens and better participants in their community:
The college attainment movement was designed by people who believed that post-secondary credentials have value. And higher education institutions, national organizations, funders, and particularly states work together to make that happen. One thing that we learned from our work is that states are a major driver. Not only do they have the power of the purse, but they educate the most students and therefore have the greatest influence.
Higher Ed as a Value Proposition
Lumina set a 15% wage premium as its benchmark to determine a realistic income increase, a figure reached through their ongoing work with economists, CEOs, and policymakers. While wages aren’t the sole or even best measure of value, they offer baseline data that can be factored into the combined value of degrees and certificates, community impact, and participation in democracy.
President Merisotis observed: “The whole reason to go to college for a workforce credential is ultimately to gain value that leads to economic prosperity, the aspirational societal benefit that all of us should be a part of.”
In some ways, however, Lumina’s goal is a moving target. Long-term value is hard to calculate with the U.S. labor market changing due to the rapid adoption of AI and the potential for economic instability that we currently face. He believes that the so-called soft skills are a solid foundation for enduring career value:
You will need to continue developing your skills, but we think the things that people historically have called innate values are things you can develop, like your ability to be ethical and caring. Having those longer-term, durable skills is ultimately going to be incredibly important to us as human workers.
Making College Affordable and Equitable
While aspirations, goals, and policies are necessary for effecting change, they can’t happen in a vacuum. Public perception will always determine whether people are willing to be part of the change. President Merisotis acknowledged the complexity of shaping that perception. On one hand, over the past five years, he’s measured a 20% decline in public confidence in the value of higher education. On the other hand, a majority of Americans still believe that college is worth the expense and effort, and they want their own family members to participate. He said this belief is prevalent in low-income populations, disproportionately people of color and people in rural areas. To meet those expectations, higher ed will have to transform. So, what would this redesign look like?
We say we want to make college more affordable, improve financial aid, or change the business model. We've got to be much more specific about how we will change delivery models and how the current and prospective consumers of higher education will understand what they do and don't get when they go to college. Absent that, I think the institutions will suffer, but more importantly, society will suffer.
A big hurdle is shifting the public focus toward equity or fairness, demonstrating a level playing field around real or perceived race, ethnicity, income, geographical, gender, and disability discrimination in higher ed. President Merisotis explained that race is both a core issue and a difficult conversation:
Lumina won't stop talking about the issues related to race, because fundamentally, nothing has changed. We also recognize that, for many at the policy level attempting to describe the value of education, conversations about race are largely untenable. It doesn't make sense to ignore the people who aren't willing to accept these barriers. I think doing a better job of contextualizing why those barriers exist is important.
Redesigning Higher Ed Can’t Wait
After discussing policy and perception, President Merisotis said that we need to answer the practical question of how to move institutions toward changes we’d like to see:
My conversations with college presidents are about accepting that the post-secondary learning industry has been ignoring public concern about the value of higher ed. The elephant in the room is affordability of a high-cost service, a long-term issue we've tried to address over the last 30 years. The benefits that you get from higher education continue to exceed the costs.
This must be addressed through fundamental redesign of our institutions to deliver more value. Prospective students and their families need to see a clearer through line between investing in an education and the near-term and long-term value of that degree or certificate in the job market. However, it’s also essential to protect the role of higher education as a source of innovation research, because influencing how the job market changes is partly a result of what colleges and universities do. Public policy makers and employers expect higher ed to successfully advocate for all these issues.
Lumina’s 2040 degree and credential goal of 75% is urgent for everyone, because all sectors of society will benefit from the economic prosperity it will bring. President Merisotis warned that letting AI technology redefine the labor market would be surrendering our responsibility for building necessary changes into the system:
Saying, "We don't need as much talent as we thought because AI is going to perform the work humans used to do" is a false promise. Human ingenuity, productivity, and happiness are ultimately derived from continuing to learn and apply that learning to our work and life.
Failure to invest in cultivating human talent will diminish American prosperity while the world continues gaining at our expense. He concluded with a call to action:
Participate in the change. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment. It's going to require public policymakers, business leaders, college and university leaders, students, and consumers. The development and deployment of human talent requires our collective effort. It is not a static process. If you're an individual, think about your learning goals and how you'll get there. If you're an employer, think about what your employees need now and tomorrow. If you're a policymaker, think about society's goals in terms of economic and social well-being. The focus on increasing human talent is ultimately why we focus on education, because it is the biggest contributor to economic prosperity.
Note: This interview aired on March 24, 2025, as part of the University Innovation Alliance’s Innovating Together Podcast, appearing live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode
- Jamie Merisotis, President and CEO, Lumina Foundation
- Lumina Foundation: an organization partnering with education and business leaders, civil rights organizations, policymakers, and others who want to reimagine how and where learning occurs
Watch the Archive
Bios of Guest and Co-Hosts
Jamie Merisotis, an internationally recognized leader in higher education, human work, philanthropy, and public policy, has been Lumina Foundation’s president and CEO since 2008. Frequently sought as a media commentator and contributor, his writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Prior to joining Lumina, he served as president of the nonpartisan Institute for Higher Education Policy, which he co-founded, and executive director of a bipartisan national commission to study college affordability. Mr. Merisotis is the author of America Needs Talent, named a Booklist Top 10 Business book of 2016, and Amazon bestseller Human Work in the Age of Smart Machines. An experienced board leader, he serves as board member and advisor to several organizations including the Commission on the American Workforce, the UK’s Ditchley Foundation, and the Central Indiana Corporate Partnership. He also advises companies that rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning to address complex challenges related to work and learning. Mr. Merisotis is past chairman and trustee emeritus of the Council on Foundations and past chairman and investment committee chair of The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. A distinguished graduate and trustee emeritus of Bates College, he has been awarded honorary degrees from colleges and universities worldwide.
Co-Host: Bridget Burns, Executive Director, University Innovation Alliance
As a trusted advisor to university presidents and policymakers, Dr. Bridget Burns is on a mission to transform the way institutions think about and act on behalf of low-income, first-generation, and students of color. She is the founding CEO of the University Innovation Alliance, a multi-campus laboratory for student success innovation that helps university leaders dramatically accelerate the implementation of scalable solutions to increase the number of college graduates.
Co-Host: Sara Custer, Editor-in-Chief, Inside Higher Ed
Sara Custer became Inside Higher Ed’s editor-in-chief in 2024 after serving four years at Times Higher Education. At THE, she worked across departments to launch and grow the Campus platform, and then lead its editorial team. Prior to that role, she served as digital editor, helping to launch THE’s newsletter strategy and overseeing daily, weekly, and monthly publications. Ms. Custer was previously editor and senior reporter at The PIE News, a website and magazine covering the international education industry. She grew up in Cushing, OK., and earned a B.A. in English literature from Loyola University Chicago and an M.A. in international journalism from City, University of London. As a journalist, she has covered global higher education for more than five years.
About Innovating Together
Innovating Together is an event series that happens live on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. It also becomes a podcast episode. Every week, we join forces with Inside Higher Ed and talk with a higher education luminary about student success innovations or a sitting college president or chancellor about how they're specifically navigating the challenges of leadership. We hope these episodes will leave you with a sense of optimism and a bit of inspiration.
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