New data from Lumina Foundation and Gallup's Aligning Education and Work: What Employers Say Higher Education Must Deliver shows that employers still value college degrees — but have serious concerns about whether graduates are ready to use them.

In this episode of the Changing Higher Ed® podcast, Dr. Drumm McNaughton speaks with Dr. Courtney Brown, Vice President of Impact and Planning and Chief Data and Research Officer at Lumina Foundation, about what 2,000 employers told Gallup about higher education, why public confidence in colleges has collapsed from 60% to one-third of Americans in a decade, and what institutional leaders must do about it.

Brown also discusses Lumina's new national goal: 75% of Americans in the labor force holding a credential of economic value by 2040, up from a current baseline of 43%.

Topics Covered:

• What the new employer data shows about degree value, skills readiness, and preparation gaps
• Why public confidence collapsed and which concern ranks first, second, and third among those losing faith
• Why current students report dramatically different experiences than the general public perceives
• The 43 million stopped-out Americans and why the system failed them
• Why today's students are not a nontraditional population to accommodate around the margins
• What Lumina's new credentials-of-value framework measures and why attainment without economic value is no longer sufficient

Three Key Takeaways for Leadership:

1. Stop playing defense and lead with evidence. Transparency about outcomes builds credibility. Defensive posturing does not.
2. Treat the skills gap as a question, not a verdict. Investigate what specific skills are missing before restructuring curriculum.
3. Redesign for the students who are enrolling, not the ones who were. Flexibility, mental health support, and advising connected to career outcomes are completion infrastructure, not amenities.

Read the transcript: https://changinghighered.com/2026-lumina-gallup-report-aligning-education-and-work/

#HigherEducation #WorkforceReadiness #LuminaFoundation #HigherEdStrategy #ChangingHigherEdPodcast